Voldie's Book Club
by cheryl bites
Summary: Voldemort is imprisoned and tortured. Harry visits him and gets off with him. Torture, swearing, sexual references. HPGW, RWDM, HPLV.
1. The Inferno

_**Chapter 1: The Inferno**_

_Week 13_

It took me a long time to wake up. I was caught in those dreams, viciously wrought dreams that segued into one another like some epic television series, sometimes fading slightly but always returning more vindictive still. I woke up, and found that the dreams continued.

Not for a few hours, though, which was pretty convenient. I woke up in St. Mungo's and was immediately the centre of the biggest party of all time. Streamers, fireworks, singing, crap dancing; the Healers eventually ordered everyone to be quiet so I could have a rest, but that didn't work because Ron, Ginny, Hermione and Tonks then arrived, sat on my bed and gave an incredibly long, garbled, intense and repetitive account of everything that had happened since I'd left them for the last time. I was so glad to see them all alive and well I couldn't bring myself to tell them to shut up because they were hurting my head. I had been unconscious, they informed me, for a little over three months.

I'd slept right through the anniversary of Sirius's death. That was the nicest thing Voldemort had ever done for me.

Then, that night: lava in my brain. Shaking, screaming, bones smashing into the floor again and again and again and... well, you get it. I noted, detachedly, "I remember dreaming about this."

And the same place: an infernal pit, a bowl in the ground made of pure black stone, ringed with fire to keep me shut in. I felt feeble there, numb, and there was this horrible figure; a tall, black-robed person, a man, I thought. He (or maybe she) was the one controlling this, the torturer. His wand was trained on me and there was acid down every nerve, and my face was hitting the floor and breaking my teeth and I was shaking and shaking and shaking and

I woke up in the morning sunshine, still in St. Mungo's; in agony from all the muscles I'd pulled while thrashing on the floor and the bruises from where I'd bashed my head on the bedside table. I registered, with great interest, the different uses of the word "agony". Category 1: I am all covered in sprains and bruises: I am in agony. Woe. Into Category 2, presumably, falls this unknown victim in the black pit, with their teeth smashed to pieces.

Even at that stage, though, the victim wasn't all that unknown. It could only really be one person.

_Week 14_

Dumbledore's face was ashen.

"Harry," he said quietly. "Alive, I see."

"Yeah," I assured him. "No worries."

"A very great deal of worries," he said. "I don't like to imagine the possibilities, myself. A nice irony it would have been if you'd survived Voldemort, to be unwittingly killed by your own side."

"They were Crucioing him," I concluded.

"They were. Of course, that wasn't the first time he had been tortured since your victory – for which, incidentally, I don't think I have yet managed to congratulate you – but it would appear that the link you share with him is occluded when you are unconscious. When you are awake, you suffer."

Well. The dreams hadn't been too great, but I didn't want to tell him that. "Are they going to do it to him again?"

"Definitely not," said Dumbledore. "All his jailers are under very strict instructions not to use any offensive magic that might travel down the link. So, in general, I think you are now _finally _safe from Voldemort, Harry."

He smiled. I grinned like a loon. It didn't take much effort to deduce that there might be escaped Death Eaters around, and one of them might try to finish me off; but at least Baldy was out of the picture. The rush of relief was so heady that I wondered if I had genuinely survived, or if I'd ascended to Paradise.

Paradise, however, was balanced by Hell.

Due to my three-month absence from the land of the living, there were relatively few problems for me to deal with. I adjusted so well that my main emotion, at first, was delight at having missed the summer holidays; it was now mid-August, and the Weasleys assured me that, in the event of my being discharged from St. Mungo's, I could stay at the Burrow until the start of term. The endless stream of visitors passing my bedside informed me, among other things, that I could probably start my seventh year on the first of September as normal, although I might need a bit of private tutoring to get me up to speed; that they were planning a spectacular late birthday party for me; that Rufus Scrimgeour was trying to give me the Order of Merlin, but not to worry, if he came near me they would drop a cartload of Dungbombs on him (Note: this last was contributed by Fred and George)... which was all very nice, but they'd had three months to find out what had happened to all the Death Eaters, and I hadn't, so I really wanted to find out quite urgently; and at length I was visited by Remus, who always had a grim temperament anyway, so I persuaded him to give me an update.

The news was:

- Draco really did have the Dark Mark, it transpired (HA!!!), but had not been sent to Azkaban. In fact, he would probably be back at school in September. I was not pleased about this.

- I'd seen Bellatrix Lestrange die; she'd been killed when the ceiling fell in. She was still dead.

- Lucius Malfoy and Fenrir Greyback had been killed in a lengthy battle with the Aurors.

- Wormtail and various minor DEs had surrendered and made grovelling confessions, and were currently in Azkaban.

- Ollivander claimed he had been acting under Imperius. The authorities weren't wholly convinced, but he was let off with a fine.

- Snape had been fully exonerated and was back at Hogwarts, teaching. DAMN!!! What was Dumbledore thinking?!

- Stan Shunpike was still in Azkaban. WTF?!?!?!?!?!

- Nobody knew what had happened to Lord Voldemort. He was in a secret location and Remus surmised that he was being tortured. Thank you for that insight, Remus.

Altogether, the scoreboard was looking decidedly dodgy. I counted at least three guilty men who should have been punished, one innocent man who was still in prison, and then there was Voldemort...

Rufus Scrimgeour arrived at my bedside. Very cunning of him, taking advantage of my feeble state; I couldn't run away. He oozed and gushed and practically flooded the ward, and generously assured me that I had the eternal gratitude of the wizarding world and if there was anything he could do –

"Freeing Stan Shunpike might be a good place to start," I said sarcastically.

Scrimgeour's flow was abruptly dammed. He made shifty eyes.

"Oh, and Voldemort, what's all that about?" I demanded. "Why are you torturing him? Why d'you want him alive at all, and if you're not going to kill him, you should treat him humanely!"

"We're very sorry about that," he said quickly. "Your – ah – our operatives had no idea that the Cruciatus curse would travel through the – "

"That's not what bothers me!" I said. "Why are you doing it to _him? _Why are you keeping him in a stone ampith – amphi – theatre thing with flames round it? Like some sort of circus animal?"

Halt. Stary eyes. "How did you know about that?"

"I can read his mind," I said. "Didn't you know that?"

Frantic cogitations. I could practically hear his devious little brain cells chattering away to one another. "Can he really read You-Know-Who's mind?" "He must do, or he wouldn't have known about that." "Is he serious about wanting us to treat the horrible creature well? He must have finally gone wacko." "Possibly, but let's play along."

Well. This Legilimency business was a lot easier than it looked.

Finally he beamed. "The mercy you show to your enemies is commendable, Harry, though of course we expected nothing less. You-Know-Who will be moved to a top-security cell in Azkaban."

"Can I see him and talk to him?" I demanded.

The beam vanished. "Really, Harry, that would be most inadvisable – "

"I am the Chosen One," I announced, insofar as one can announce between gritted teeth. "I vanquished Voldemort, and you just offered me any reward I wanted. Now, when all I want to do is _visit _the fucker, you're playing silly buggers."

Suaveness returned. "Now, now, Harry, do calm down. Of course there's no question about your getting your reward. You will be permitted to visit You-Know-Who in Azkaban, subject to Dumbledore's approval, of course. We will put Mr Shunpike on trial as soon as may be. Is that everything?"

Well, it wasn't over much, but it would have to do. "Thank you _so _much," I said sweetly, and we had a brief Fakest Smile competition and went back to our tedious lives.

_Week 16_

The Dementors had not returned to Ministry control. Azkaban was staffed by human guards instead; or, rather, the bit I was allowed into was. I had a strong suspicion that it was the most sanitised bit. The air was inescapably dank. My trousers stuck to my legs. There were distant, indefinable echoes. It was like a sewage works.

All the time, I was gritting my teeth, trying fruitlessly to prepare myself for the moment when I would have to see that chamber, the ring of fire, the infernal caldera where Voldemort screamed. I knew it was pointless. As soon as I saw it I would be transported straight back to torture and nightmares. I tried not to puke.

The guard stopped, and nodded me through an enormous, studded metal door. The handle chilled my hand.

...And then after all it was just a cold, grey concrete room, not the terrifying hole in the ground. The anticlimax was unspeakable. The curtain of flame, however, was still there. It drew a neat, surreal line across the chamber, burning silently in mid-air to cut Voldemort off from the rest of the world.

"How do I get into...?" I began uncertainly, but turned round to find that the guard had already gone.

It didn't matter, because _that voice _replied from behind the fire, "Ih you'h got 'he proper clearance you can hust ssstep hrough."

That brought me up to the flames very quickly, but I stared at them with a great deal of residual doubt. If Voldemort tells you to jump into a fire, then, as a general rule, you shouldn't. Still, the guard wouldn't have left me here if she knew I couldn't get in... I stuck a finger through the flames. I couldn't feel any heat at all. I stepped through.

Concrete box, single bed, Dark Lord, suppurating stench.

I doubled up, wiping my eyes in agony and holding my nose. "WHAT DE FUCK IS DAT SBELL?"

"Don't shout," Voldemort said.

"I can't stand dis sbell," I said, muffling my face in my sleeve.

"Shit."

I thought he was swearing, but he said "Shit," slightly louder, and I realised he was imparting information.

"Can I ask the guard to cleab it up?" I said, edging as far away from the bed as possible.

"Please do," he said in the same toneless voice, staring up at the ceiling.

So that was the second climactic meeting between the Dark Lord and Le Pot. It didn't have much of a ring to it, I thought as I pottered through the corridors trying to find the guard. At last I got all the way back to the front desk, asked sheepishly for some help, initiated a long, surreally matter-of-fact discussion between all the different staff as to what was the best way to deal with this problem, and was finally handed my wand.

"Are you joking?" I said, horrified. "I can't take my wand near Voldemort."

A cool glare as a punishment for saying his name. Clearly they were still afraid of him. "You can't take it into his room, but you can use it from the other side of the curtain."

Back to the concrete box, and a hell of a lot of Aguamenting and Scourgifying. At last I passed back through the curtain, counterintuitively leaving my wand in the middle of the floor, and he said in that flat voice, "Hanks."

"Is that it?" I said, bemused. "'Thanks'?"

Silence, then again, "Hanks."

After all the time it had taken to clean the bed, we had hardly any time left. I stood there, watching him.

The bed wasn't a normal one at all. It was an odd brown sofa thing, with only a couple of dodgy blankets to keep him warm. I wondered if it had some special significance or was just a standard-issue Azkaban bed. He had a huge chunk of iron round his neck, too; looked uncomfortable.

I said, "After all this..."

He said, "Yesss."

"What's wrong with your teeth?" I said mildly.

He bared them, or what was left of them, and in doing so confirmed my visions; it was indeed him that I'd seen in my dreams, bashing his teeth out against the stone as he was Cruciated. The sight maybe should have been satisfying, but in fact it was sickening. My stomach jolted.

He said, "Is 'he guard still not 'here?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Will you ressscue me?" he asked.

"Will I hell," I said, unable to believe my ears. "You're pathetic."

He twitched one eyebrow indifferently; gave a minute shrug. Clearly he'd never expected me to do it in the first place.

After a long pause, I said "I came to see if there was anything you wanted."

"What?"

"I said, is there anything you want?"

There was what I can only describe as a spherical silence.

I suggested, "Food. Books."

"Booksss," he said.

"Yes."

"How should I read hem?"

"What?"

He withdrew his hands from under the blanket, and silently held them up. They were no longer arachnoid and spindly. Every finger had been severed at the last joint.

I said, "I'll turn the pages."

"Hanks," he said for the third time, in the same flat, lifeless voice.

"What book d'you want?"

"'He _Inherno_," he said.

Week 17 

Term started. I had hardly dared to believe it would take place. At King's Cross I kept my wand ready to shoot down marauding Death Eaters. On board the train, I talked to the others in monosyllables and waited pessimistically for it to break down. When it in fact pulled out of the station and set off to Hogwarts, my astonishment was extreme. Then I started to smile and the others all sighed in relief.

"I can't believe I'm going back," I said joyously. "I still can't believe I'm alive."

"That might be a Scepticatory Horngobbler," Luna said solemnly, and I dutifully recited "I do believe in fairies" to drive the thing out of the compartment. Ron turned brick red and made small explosions, and eventually excused himself just to get away from us, saying vaguely that he was going to meet someone. I wouldn't have minded, but the corridor soon filled up with gaping people, and I had to hide under a coat.

As it turned out, this was a helpful forewarning of what would happen when I arrived at Hogwarts, viz., complete mayhem. Students stampeded towards me and I was crushed under their ungainly hooves. Everybody, apparently, wanted to gawk at me, congratulate me, touch me or applaud me, or sometimes a combination of the above. McGonagall shouted herself hoarse getting everything under control, thus winning my eternal gratitude, and then Dumbledore had to ruin everything by toasting me and giving a little speech, which was so embarrassing I hid under the table. The rest of the year, I decided, was going to be appalling.

Dormitory. Seamus, Dean, Neville. I kept blinking at everything for a long time, unable to credit that Voldemort was defeated and I was still alive. For some reason seeing the Gryffindor dorm the same as ever brought this home to me in a way that nothing else had. It was quite peculiar. The others were embarrassed and diffident, but I wasn't arsed, it was just nice to see them again.

The next morning I got 282 letters and parcels, which was awful, and we sorted out timetables. DADA with Snape again; lovely. On the one hand it appeared the Curse of the DADA Teacher had been broken, but on the other, what on earth was _Snape _supposed to teach _me _about defeating Dark wizards? Post-Voldie, the idea seemed... stupid. And he would hate me more than ever. Best not to think about it. I didn't get the chance, in any case, because I was collared by a million teachers who wanted to congratulate me, and they weren't as easy to shake off as the students. Hagrid hugged me so hard he almost throttled me to death, cried into my hair, and said my mum and dad would have been proud of me. (He also assured me his killer pink bats were harmless, but we'll draw a veil over that.) Just while I was recovering from this, Slughorn cornered me and invited me to more parties, filling me with horror like a moustachioed petrol pump.

"Professor, it'll be full of people trying to make money off the back of me!"

"Fair amount of money to be made for _yourself_, you know," he pointed out, waistcoat buttons glinting with greed.

"I don't need that! I've got plenty for myself and they'll just try to make me talk about everything that happened – and – "

I let this trail off drearily, aware that even Slughorn wouldn't try to force me into loquacity. I was correct. He mumbled disappointedly about grief and trauma and withdrew to eat some oysters. McGonagall immediately collared me and demanded to know when I wanted to hold the Quidditch tryouts.

"Any day is fine, and Professor, how am I getting to Azkaban to visit Voldemort?"

Stunned pause. "_Pardon_, Potter?"

"I'm going to Azkaban. Regularly. The Minister of Magic gave me permission. I'm taking books to Voldemort; he's bored."

Her eyes narrowed in a chilling way. "And has Professor Dumbledore given permission for this?"

"Erm. No," I said, honestly bewildered. "Do I need permission? I mean, should I bother him about..."

"Students aren't allowed to leave school during term-time, Potter," she said very sternly. "If these visits are to take place, I expect them to be authorised by the Headmaster. Once you've got his permission, come and see me again," and I walked away feeling highly disgruntled and thinking, Dammit, what kind of saviour needs to get permission from his headmaster?

_Week 18_

The next week, Dumbledore sent me a note asking me to come to his office. This was a great relief and, as far as I was concerned, not before time. I knew I was being unfair, since he was a headmaster, after all, not a prison warden; but it seemed to me that the situation vis-á-vis me and Voldie was a lot more important than ensuring the first week of term went smoothly for a load of dribbling brats.

Especially when I woke up slippery and shaking at 2am, my mind charred.

"Faeces Fancy," I told the gargoyle, and stomped upstairs to ask permission to visit a twisted madman in a top-security jail.

Dumbledore, astonishingly, said no.

"I'm sorry, Harry," he said, "but I can't possibly permit this idea to go ahead. Voldemort is still extremely dangerous, even in his present state. He has to be kept alive – " Then he stopped and looked at me enquiringly as I gave a burst of incredulous laughter.

"Dangerous? Professor, he's got no wand, he's stuck behind a wall of fire and he hasn't even got hands! How much _less _dangerous could he be?!"

He gazed at me silently until I became contrite and mumbled, "Sorry, Professor."

"Thank you, Harry. I believe I shall finish that poor, truncated sentence, as it was actually quite important. Voldemort has to be kept alive, but he must at all costs be prevented from escaping Azkaban and from exacting revenge. The chances of those things happening increase in direct proportion to the number of people who have access to him; especially, Harry, when one of those people is you. We know Voldemort can possess you. We know he wants revenge on you for defeating him. Whatever plans he may have – and believe me, Harry, he will have plans – you are the person they are most likely to involve. On no account are you, of all people, to visit him in prison."

I sat in wild confusion. At last I said, "So you're saying he wants, that if I visit him in jail, he'll kill me."

"Does that surprise you?"

"No, but Professor, how is that a risk? I mean, it'll only kill _me_. If I'm dead, it won't help him to escape. I leave my wand outside. So it's not dangerous."

There was a long pause. I think he reckoned my idea of "dangerous" was a bit crap. At last he looked at me over his glasses and said gently, "I must say, this is quite a change in your personality, Harry. You've never shown any inclination towards humanitarian work before."

What a _stupid _thing to say. "Sir," I said angrily, "it wasn't like I was reading Amnesty International leaflets and I thought, Oh, I should do something for torture victims in Azkaban. It's personal. It's the most personal..." I ran out of words.

He asked quietly, "Am I to take it, then, that your newfound mercy extends only to Tom Riddle?"

"_No._ It's just proved the point. I can feel it in a way nobody else can, because I _am _him, when he's being tortured. I feel everything that happens. I know what it's like. That's how I know it's wrong."

I knew that sounded stupid ("Torture is bad!"), but I'd never been a great orator.

Dumbledore gave me a penetrating look and said "So it was experiencing his torture that caused you to change your mind?"

"No," I said truthfully. "It was when they'd got me – when they did it to me, before the fight. Sir, I know it didn't last very long, but, I mean, the thing was, was that they seemed so _pleased _with themselves... They kept going off into, like, the good versus evil philosophical stuff, and acting like, as if they'd proved their point. By torturing me. They kept acting as if they'd proved something really clever and they hadn't proved _anything_. It's not big or clever, it's just senseless and – "

My throat closed up and I couldn't tell him all the other stuff, about how I'd realised halfway through that evil was limitless and ubiquitous and it was all very well fighting evil but what you really needed to do was nurture good, create ways of being that _didn't _depend on or relate to violence in some way, and how obviously you had to start by forgiving dodgy people to create a reality for them where goodness was possible; which was possibly just as well.

At last he said, with finality, "I'm sorry, Harry."

So I'd lost. No books. No visits. I went through a brief confused period in which I was convinced that of course, Dumbledore was right; then I developed an uneasy feeling that I was a puling schoolboy who'd defeated Voldemort but couldn't stand up to his own headmaster. I tried to think what that morbid, amputated figure on the bed would say when I reported failure.

I had a horrible suspicion that he would say, in exactly the same tone as before, "Hanks."

Then I had a diametrically opposed voice speaking in my head, from, was it really only four months ago? – "And you feel that you have exerted your very best efforts in this matter, do you? That you have exercised all of your considerable ingenuity? That you have left no depth of cunning unplumbed in your quest?"

No, was the answer to that. Rather confused memories packed into my head, of human rights activists in Brazil and Nigeria who got raped and tortured and executed for trying to protect others. Fat lot of effort I'd put into this so far, and really, you _can't _very well leave people to get treated like that, even if they are old Scalyguts. Fortunately, the memory had already provided me with a possible answer.

Good old Felix Felicis. Ron and Hermione had used half of it trying to find me, but there was still a good-sized drop in the bottom of the bottle.

"Harry," Dumbledore said in a no-nonsense tone when he opened the door, "the start of term is a very busy time for me. I hope this will be quick."

"I hope so too, sir."

I drifted into the middle of his office and wondered to what extent I should bother lying. Dumbledore wasn't as good a Legilimens as Voldemort or Snape, I knew that.

"It's still about Voldemort. I need things explained, and there's no-one else who can..."

"Harry, we've been through this."

"It can't possibly end like this," I said as if I hadn't heard him.

The bottle of Felix Felicis hung, secret, in my pocket. I put my hand in there carelessly and stuck one finger inside the glass.

"Professor," I said, "I don't... The thing is... It's all over so quickly, and I've done it, defeated him, but it doesn't feel like I've... I'll never understand, at this rate, about... my parents."

The reply was quiet and incredibly weary. "You've suffered more than anyone has a right to expect from life... are doing, even now."

I whispered to the window, "I need to talk to him."

There was an awful pause. I decided now was the right moment to raise my hand, as naturally as possible, and lick the stuff off my finger.

I think he thought I was wiping away a tear.

He said, "Yes. Yes, of course, you need to talk to him..." He sounded disappointed, and it was agonising; but it wasn't as if I was being Crucioed and having my fingers cut off. Bizarrely, this felt worse. "I'll make arrangements for you to go there, once a month."

Not enough. Dilemma. "Do you promise?" I said suspiciously. "I mean, you let me go once, and changed your mind."

"Well, sometimes the facts change," he said gently, "but yes, I do promise."

Sorted. Thank god for that one drop. I only hoped there was enough of it left.

"Once a month isn't enough, Professor," I said, trying not to sound petulant. "I'll forget everything in between."

"True. But... How often do you suggest?"

"Once a week."

"Harry, that, apart from other things, will interfere with your schoolwork."

"Bugger my schoolw – ! Oh, sorry, Professor."

But it just amused him, to judge by his subsequent tone of voice. Obviously my luck was still working. "I suggest you avoid sodomising your schoolwork, Mr Potter, and visit Azkaban once per fortnight. That is, as I believe the bidders at auctions say, my final offer."

Fortnightly. Not bad. It would do.

"Hanks," said the dry voice in my mind.


	2. Dreamsnake

_**Chapter 2: Dreamsnake**_

Author's note: the chapter now has fanart. The URL is www dot deviantart dot com/deviation/58630670/.

Thanks very much to Gabzies for drawing the picture.

_Week 19_

Voldemort's new accent took a lot of getting used to. The missing affricates and fricatives made me feel oddly embarrassed and ashamed, but, being a snake, he still had no trouble with sibilants. This was unnerving. From a sandbank of mumbling there would suddenly burst forth a serpent, a loud, painfully high-frequency "ssss". I felt that by smashing his face they had not diminished his power the way they might have done to most other tyrants; they had unleashed it by destroying his humanity.

"Can you still speak Parseltongue?" I said diffidently, and was pleased to hear the words slide out of me in a hiss. It had been so long since I'd used PT I'd been afraid it wouldn't work at all, but evidently Voldie looked enough like a snake to have the same psychological effect.

Not that it did me much good. "Parseltongue," he said via that medium, with a horrible glare, "is an ancient and noble speech, and is not to be used for saying, 'Please turn the page'."

"A boa constrictor said 'Thanks, amigo' to me once."

Voldie laughed until he cried, then clutched his ribcage and whimpered horribly, like an injured dog. A hideous fit of coughing then rattled his minuscule frame.

"What's wrong with you?" I said.

"Lung-Lacerating 'Harm," Voldemort said shortly.

I was perplexed. "Well, if they shredded your lungs, how do you breathe?"

"They partly healed 'he damahe," he rasped. He then coughed some more and repeated sourly, "Partly."

I slowly assimilated the knowledge that they really had used this curse on him and that nobody had told me. "Well," I mused, "you'd think people would tell me if they were going to do these things. I might have wanted to join in."

Immediate turmoil. He threw himself back, away from me, stumpy fingers scrabbling feebly at thin air, broken teeth bared in terror. I'd said that last paragraph on a purely intellectual level, such as, How odd, they're torturing Voldemort without letting me know; it doesn't make sense. "I wasn't serious," I said. Too late. Damage done. He sat hunched over, wheezing agitatedly like a snake with a broken rattle.

I shuffled over to the bed and patted his back uncertainly, half sympathetic and half revolted, as if I were shoving my hand into a heap of slime. "I didn't mean it."

"You didn't mean it?" he whispered, and went off into more coughing. "It was hust a _hoke?_"

"I don't torture people," I said with more certainty than ever, because seeing him like this didn't give me any kind of gratification; it was horrible.

"You hust _did!_" he hissed.

"Yeah," I said leadenly.

It was appalling that now, just by saying _words_, I could torture Voldemort. Could make him spasm and hyperventilate and try to escape. And no, that was wrong, it wasn't just by saying words, was it? Because I could have said exactly the same words if the Death Eaters had won and _he_ was torturing _me_, but it wouldn't have scared him. It was the torture that made him like this, and the words were... a label. A switch. It was like he was permanently chained to an electric chair, and I had the switch in my hand.

"Why don't you attack me?" I demanded.

"What, apart hrom 'he hact I'm chained to 'he bed?"

"Er..."

He slowly lifted the duvet and threw it aside. His boring old black robe had been hacked off at mid-thigh, apparently with a dull machete. He pulled the robe up to his waist, and I saw that both his legs had been hacked off at mid-thigh as well; hopefully not with a dull machete, since the stumps were rounded and clean, but I wasn't sure and didn't want to know. Perhaps I should have said something sympathetic, but I was staring, mesmerised, at the two little vaginas that were all he had in the front of his crotch.

"Hemipenes," he said without interest.

"What?"

"Hemipenes," he said in exactly the same tone of voice. I saw that this was going to become a habit.

"What's a hemipeeny?"

"Sssnakes have hem. Two." He did some laboured breathing and said, "Only use one."

"Well, what's the point in having two, then?" I said, but he wasn't in any fit state to answer. He threw his head back and rolled his eyes in agony. I didn't know what to do. After a while I went to cover him back up with the duvet, but he put out a hand to stop me, and I saw that he was sweating.

"Are you all right?"

"Shut up, Potter. Shut up and crawl away and die. I hate you."

"I brought you the _Inferno_," I said.

"Good," he said, and shuffled sideways. "Let's read."

I hesitated for a moment. However well subdued he might be by torture and amputations, it's always a bit unpredictable having a wild, wiry mass of murderer in bed with you. Then I gave up; if I wasn't going to be at least a little brave, there was no point in being here at all. I took the books out of the bag, climbed into bed with him and opened the Divine Comedy.

An hour later I was completely absorbed and had forgotten I was supposed to be leaving. We had skipped a lot of the boring introduction and got onto the different circles of Hell. I was engrossed.

"So the highest circles are the least important ones, sin-wise, but then there's the tyrants here – "

"Halfhay down. Yes."

"And underneath, suicides!"

A laugh like sandpaper, and a horrid grin. "D'you know what it means 'here, where it says 'Hiolent Against Nahure'?"

"Er..."

"Sssodomites."

"What's a sodomite?"

"Anal and oral sex."

"_What?_ – "

He cut me off with a weary flap of the hand. "Yesss, yesss, I know. I don't do too badly hor being a tyrant, but" (some gasping for breath) "I drop two circles for shagging."

"THAT'S STUPID!"

"Don't shout."

"What's lower down?"

More gasping. "The way it's ssset out is mostly on the basisss of _mens rea_. God can read sssinners' minds, remember. Danté's concerned with 'heir _intenhions_. Wih breach of trust. At he top we hahe people who don't control heir supposed animal inssstincts. Lower, heretics, which 'he church didn't like much. Hurher down, it's people who had some kind of responsibility to others. Who hailed them."

Most of that went over my head. "What's this – Simoni – thing?"

"Simonisers are priests who abuse 'heir posihion."

"Lower down than mass murderers?!"

"Hypocrisy, Potter."

"And at the bottom there's what?"

"Sssatan eating the sssouls oh Brutus, Cassius and Judas. Traitors."

"Why are they lower than the tyrants?!"

"Becaussse hey had responsibilities and hey betrayed hem."

"And you didn't. Yeah, yeah. I know what you're up to. You're trying to make me feel sorry for you. You're only a tyrant, so you stay near the top – "

"No."

" – Yeah, yeah, you're a sodomite, whereas Snape's a traitor so he's at the bottom. Which I agree with, actually. But you think you're getting away with all the stuff you've done? Fuck off."

"Patricide. Traitor Against 'Heir Kindred."

"What?" I said, and remembered he'd killed his father. Personally I thought his dad ought to be in the same bowge for having abandoned him and Merope, but unfortunately at that point the guard came back and called for me.

"Bugger," I realised. "I forgot what time it was. – Coming in just a second," I yelled. To Voldemort I continued, "I forgot to ask if you wanted anything to eat."

"No," he said. "I'll shit 'he bed."

"Look, how are you _supposed_ to go to the loo?"

"That'sss it."

"That's ridiculous. – Don't you eat anything?"

"I get a meal about once a week."

"I can conjure you up some magical food. Badly. It'll go away again before it makes its way to, you know..."

"Really?" said Voldemort. His eyes brightened for the first time, well, ever, and he sat up looking almost animated, gave a few wheezing coughs and said, "Can I have oranhes?"

"Mr Potter!" shouted the guard.

"Yes, you can. Goodbye. What book d'you want?"

"Newt Scamander'sss _Sssnakes Of He World_," he said.

"OK. See you in two weeks," I said distractedly, and I hurled myself through the curtain, did my conjuring, and left. I hope he liked his oranges.

_Week 20_

At school, things were soothing yet strange. Draco Malfoy was following me round with a demented look on his face; I was used to this, of course, but it didn't bode well. Snape now hated me even more pathologically, and I stood well away from him in DADA in case he used me to demonstrate Avada Kedavra.

They weren't the problem. I was used to all that crap, and what with Voldie and torture it was difficult to take them seriously anyway.

Draco and Snape: Sneer, sneer, sneer.

Me: Yawn, yawn, yawn.

(I did extra yawning during the day because of what was happening at night.)

The problem was Ron and Hermione. It had taken a while for it to sink in, but something about our dynamic had permanently altered. Ron was secretive, far from garrulous, and mumbled indifferently when spoken to. Hermione was frenetic, vaguely upset, and spent _all _her time studying, as opposed to a mere 99.9. What was more, they didn't hang around together; Ron seemed to drift around in a nebula with Dean, Seamus and Neville, and Hermione had appended herself to Ginny and Luna. This seemed, frankly, weird.

I resented the change greatly. I had survived being tortured and got out of hospital, and I wanted to feel normal again; and they were obstructing me, dammit. I mean, if _I_ could act normally then surely _they_ could!

(I've never been a particularly unselfish person.)

"Oh, god, I'm not going downstairs if there's a thousand letters for me again," I said wearily one morning. (Every major story in the _Prophet _was followed by a renewed deluge of post.) "Hermione, d'you think you could like go down and get my letters, and take them away somewhere and burn them, and then I won't have to put up with – "

"No!" Hermione said indignantly. "Do it yourself!"

"But I can't stand it!" I moaned. "And I can't leave them for Filch to clean up, he might read them and they might be obscene. Go on, I'll pay you."

"Harry Potter, you can't pay your friends to do things for you," she said, looking extremely amused.

"Bugger. Fine, where's a first-year – Oi! You! First-year in the red and blue hat!"

"I'm a second-year," the minute sprog said coldly.

"Harry!" said Hermione, scandalised.

"Oh, come on! Look, second-year, please can you go down to the Great Hall and collect all the letters addressed to me – there should be about two hundred – and burn them. I'll pay you a Galleon."

The sprog's dubious expression vanished immediately and it jogged off enthusiastically through the portrait hole. My seat that morning was blessedly free of heaps of paper, although I could see a large cloud of black smoke outside in the grounds.

Reaching for the fried bread, seated in between Hermione and Ron for the dozenth time, I watched them glance away from each other in embarrassment and suddenly thought: fuck me, it really did happen. While I was in a coma, they must have got it together, and now they've had a bust-up. End of friendship. Oh dear, oh dear.

The sprog appeared next to me. "D'you really want me to burn this one?" it squeaked. "I think it's a book."

_Snakes of the World. _"Shit! Sorry. Yes, yes, Hermione. Yes, thank you for not burning it, you get an extra Sickle."

"You should set a better example," she informed me, and Ron didn't even snort and roll his eyes.

Snakes have really weird genitalia.

_Week 21_

"Why do torturers think of loads of different ways of torturing?" I asked Voldie. "Is it just to annoy people?"

"I wonder, sssometimes," he said in his monotonous voice. The hissing broke through like weeds through concrete.

"When I was in your place..." I said rather diffidently, "I know I wasn't there for long, but they kept patting themselves on the back, saying, we spent ages thinking up this one. And it all seemed pointless because they all hurt just the same."

"Oh," said Voldie. "Bullhitting. 'I am 'he best torhurer in 'he world.' You get 'hat in any career."

"Career," I said. "Torture's a career?"

He gave this tremendous thought. "Well, put it 'his way," he said, "you don't want to be sacked. Oh – also, hey like to heel hey're doing somehing."

"_Doing _something?"

"Well, hey're not. Not doing anyhing cleher or dihicult. Not highting ogres wih heir bare hands, are hey? Torhure's a hery eheminate job. Sit 'here in peace and comhort while hictim suhhers. It's easy. People like to make it sssound hard."

"_You_ didn't use to do any of that."

He smiled faintly. "I _am_ eheminate, Potter."

"But why boast _to the victim? _Why say, I created this torture just for you?"

He shuddered visibly and I realised this possibly wasn't the best line of conversation. At last he said, "You've never been the torhurer, Potter. You wouldn't underssstand it."

"I don't want to be the torturer, thanks."

"Helps with underssstanding the mechanism," he said. "That's how you train new torhurers. Torhure hem. Hahe to see it hrom boh sidesss."

"Lovely."

"Mm." Pause. "It's working on me."

"Why were they torturing you?"

"Hor hun mostly."

"Didn't they want to know anything?"

"Sometimesss."

"Wait a minute. Didn't you say – What d'you mean, it _is _working?"

Gurgles of laughter. "Oh, Potter. Blesss you. You're ssso sssweet."

"YOU MEAN THEY HAVEN'T STOPPED?"

Concrete again. "Don't shout."

"I thought it was just NIGHTMARES. I didn't KNOW it was bloody REAL!"

"Stop shouting. Stop shouting. Stop shouting."

"SHOUTING, SHOUTING, THAT'S ALL YOU BLOODY CARE ABOUT, AND YOU'RE BEING FUCKING TORTURED!"

"I hate you. I hate you," he said, rocking backwards and forwards and hugging the blanket. "Stop shouting. Stop shouting. Go away."

"What's so bad about shouting?" I whispered irritably, trying to calm down.

"Potter, it _hurts_. I'm in pain. On top of everyhing else, I can't ssstand the noise."

"You didn't tell me it still hurt," I snarled. "I don't know any healing spells, except _Episkey_."

There followed a short, extremely rough-and-ready lesson on healing spells; according to Voldemort, I also got my stint of doing the torturing instead of being the one tortured, since I kept wrenching his guts around by accident.

"Yeah," I called back through the wall of fire, "but I'm not boasting to you, like, 'Weak dyspeptic fool, I told you your intestines would be your downfall', am I?"

"I don't eat," he shouted back, "so what you ought to say is...'" and he gave me a long list of bloodcurdling recommendations in an increasingly animated voice; by the time I finally stepped back through the curtain he was much closer to his arrogant old self. It was frightening how much the pain had blunted his personality. Or what I the outsider experienced as his personality, at any rate.

"All rubbih about weaknesss," he pronounced as I stepped back through the curtain. "About weaknesss being your own hault. Weaknesses exissst; you can't hange 'hat. All you can do is ssstop people finding out about hem, which isn't always possible," he concluded with a sigh.

"Such as, if you're their arch-enemy and they know all about you."

He stared at me quizzically and the glistening lips curled up into a small, sly smile. "Do you know all about me, Potter?"

"No," I said quickly.

"But you know about hemipenes now."

"Yeah," I said, producing his books. "And if you were a woman, you'd be able to turn your vagina inside out."

"I'm not completely sure I'd want to."

"I brought you some murder mysteries as well."

"Dear god," he said, "'he lowessst horm of literahure."

"Oh, shut up!" I said, sprawling out on his bed and selecting a murder at random. "I know the snakes book was for me. I thought you might want something to read."

"_Not murders_."

"Fine! What, then?"

"_Dreamsssnake_. Vonda McIntyre. Bring it next hortnight."

The butler did it.

_Week 22_

My interview with Dumbledore went rather less well. Voldemort is still being tortured, I said, and he listened. He was kind. He was understanding. He donated sherbet lemons. He just didn't see why I should want to tell him this.

Had I been witness to the torture, he asked? Was I trapped inside Voldie's body as it happened? Was magical damage flowing down the link?

"No," I lied. (There are things that are hard to talk about to your headmaster.)

Well, then, was the essential sum of his answer, why was I so fussed about it?

I couldn't think how to tell him; couldn't think of anything I hadn't already said. Another week went by. I fizzed. I fretted. I worried.

I was horribly tortured, fell over and hit my head on the nearest solid object.

I don't think I ever filled you in on the Quidditch tryouts, did I? Well, basically they'd been an interesting new form of torture. Literally half the school had turned up to stare at me in that glazed way that reminds me so much of slabs of haddock.

I shouted for all the first-years and non-Gryffindors to get off the pitch and they dribbled away slowly, still staring with their mouths open. I find silent staring uniquely difficult to deal with. It seems to deny you your humanity, as if they don't think you've got the mental presence to realise you're being stared at, or that it's normal to reply when someone shouts at you. After thinking that, I felt stupid; "deny you your humanity", indeed: as if I had anything to complain about when Voldie was being... yeah, well. Then I decided another annoying thing about torture is that it robs you of the ability to take everyday things seriously. Anyway, I eventually managed to whittle the applicants down to half of Gryffindor, and devoutly hoped that Hermione would do some more Confunding.

After large amounts of screaming, tears and threats, I'd managed to get a team together: Ginny, Demelza, Peakes and Coote, Dean Thomas as third Chaser, and me. I was a bit apprehensive about Dean, since he obviously wasn't very fond of me for pinching Ginny, but decided that he'd just have to get over it. Besides, all that paled into insignificance beside the explosion of rage that overtook me when McLaggen had the nerve to apply again.

"YOU!" I said. "What d'you think you're doing, trying to get on the team?!"

"No need to be like that, Potter," he said from an uncomfortable halfway house in between defensive and dismissive. "Anyway, I've been training all summer. You'd be wasting your time with these other deadbeats."

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU THINK I'D LET YOU ON THE FRIGGING TEAM! YOU CRACKED MY FUCKING SKULL, IF YOU HADN'T NOTICED!"

"I wouldn't have if you'd looked where you were fucking flying!" he yelled back.

"YOU SLAGGED OFF THE OTHER PLAYERS, YOU NEVER SHUT UP, AND YOU'RE A USELESS WASTE OF SPACE!"

I suppose I'd have thought twice before saying that last year, but compared with Bellatrix and Fenrir he just didn't seem very frightening. I waited for him to go for his wand first, just so I wouldn't get in trouble, then hexed him into oblivion. I know that was a bit tight, but it was deeply satisfying, and besides, it kept my reputation afloat.

I did have to do a month's detention, but I didn't particularly mind. At least while I was writing lines there was nobody to stare at me.

So anyway, it we'd reached the first week of October on a Tuesday afternoon, and we were having Quidditch practice and the new team flew quite well for twenty minutes or so. At that point Hagrid's pink killer bats swarmed onto the pitch and started attacking us, so we all hurtled back to the changing rooms in a panic and tried to hide in there.

"Do something!" Ginny shouted to me. "You're the Chosen One, it should be easy!"

"I fight Dark Lords, not fucking pink bats!" I shouted back, but I eventually remembered that bats rely on sound and therefore suggested we make an incredibly loud noise. That worked, although I think it might have worked on pretty much any species, not just bats; the little monsters zoomed off to the Forbidden Forest where, presumably, they spent their time attacking other nasty creatures that Hagrid had created. In any case, our practice session was now in ruins, not least because the whole school had come to gawk and find out what was going on, so all I could do was reschedule it for the following day and slink off post-haste.

Then I had a brilliant idea. "See you on Thursday, OK?" I shouted very loudly. "THURSDAY." Then I left feeling rather chuffed at the possibility of shedding a few gaping morons.

Hence, Wednesday. We are blessedly free of onlookers, apart from Hermione and a couple of other Gyffindors. Ginny passes the ball backwards to where she thinks Dean ought to be. He isn't; he makes a startled spasm sideways and manages to catch the Quaffle with the tip of one finger, but doesn't look too pleased. From my position above them I think I can see what went wrong, and lean forwards to shout advice, and then

pain

black

fire

don't

Don't

DON'T

A dark figure leaning over me, a space where its face should be. A black hand touched my clothes and I tried to push it away. I was too weak now, or perhaps too disgusted to touch it properly.

Disgust. Its tongue dripped bleach, and I felt it all over again: hatred, anger, distress, contempt; disgust. I couldn't prevent it, and I reminded myself that there was no reason to, that it was right to feel hatred when hateful things were spoken. I turned away, ignored the pain, but I had never been good at ignoring words.

It made pitying, leering offers of peace. Compromise. I refused, held myself rigid. Just another insult; they never changed.

And then: hospital wing.

"Keep still," Madam Pomfrey said sternly as she popped up in my field of vision. (I wondered vaguely whether that was how she earned her name.) "You shouldn't try to move at all just now, and you're not having visitors, either."

Snaggle-toothed fear. "What's wrong with me?"

"Broken back," she said succinctly, and I spent a day in bedridden boredom until she was entirely satisfied that the bones had knitted and the nerves were safe. It wasn't too bad, though; mostly I was just deeply thankful to have escaped dying in such an embarrassing way.

By that evening (it was Thursday already, I found) I was beginning to worry about the feasibility of seeing Voldemort, and besides, I wanted visitors. Madam P balked and grumbled.

"Sunday evening is a little soon for that," she said menacingly, "and you're not allowed visitors just yet. That's why I shut out the Headmaster."

"The – was he here?"

"Yes, he wanted to talk to you about what had happened. Your girlfriend was here as well, but I told her you were resting and shouldn't be unduly excited."

Who would have thought Madam Pomfrey could be saucy? I blushed in horror. I did manage to persuade her to unbar the doors, however, and presently an agitated headmaster rushed in. (All right, not rushed. I've never seen Dumbledore rush anywhere, and I don't think I ever will.)

"Harry," he said, "I am having no luck with the Ministry at present, not that that represents any great change. Are you feeling any better?"

"I feel fine," I assured him, which was true as far as my body was concerned. I tried not to think about the psychological side of things, but that didn't work very well because at that moment Dumbledore asked me to describe what I'd seen while I was sharing Voldemort's thoughts. "Almost nothing" was of course the answer, but he still conjured up a scroll and quill and enchanted them to scribble down my answers as I mumbled about dark figures and being taunted and being burnt. (I omitted practically everything of any significance.) He patted my shoulder and gave me a gentle pep-talk and I did feel a bit better, but as he glided off he promised to send my report to the Ministry, and I was pretty sure that wouldn't do much good.

Grumble. Moan. Worry. GINNY!

Her head alone appeared above me, protruding, one hopes, from the Invisibility Cloak. I gave a muffled yelp and jumped up, and we both waited guiltily for Madam Pomfrey, but she remained quiescent. I suppose even she has to sleep sometimes.

"It was very difficult coming to see you," she whispered perkily, sliding off the rest of the Cloak. "I had to fight off Hermione and Ron."

"Oh, well, it was bloody good you did. – Hermione and Ron? Are they talking to each other now?"

"Yeah, well they are _now_, aren't they? You almost died, if you hadn't noticed. It had to happen when we weren't looking at you – " An unGinnylike twist of the face, which I thought might indicate tears.

"Did I fall on you?" I giggled nervously. "That really would have been bad" – chuckle, sob, snog.

While we were kissing I let her concentrate on the "nearly dying" part; I kept quiet about the second-hand torture. I didn't want to tell her that it wasn't my proximity to death that made life feel too short; it was the anguish and the malice that made kindness feel too sparse, and I clung to her because I knew my feelings for her were all good; and she was a good person, too, and should be cherished.

"Ginny," I shouted in a sudden rush of emotional duty, "I'm really sorry, I've been so wrapped up in my own problems and, like, Voldemort's, I haven't really thought about you enough. I'm so sorry – I feel like I've neglected you and I should have asked you about your feelings and now you spend all your time hanging around hospitals – "

"Well, actually, I'm pregnant," said Ginny, who had never been one to beat around the bush, whatever kind of bush you're talking about; and I was speechless for a few seconds but then miraculously managed _not _to say "Who's the father?", for which I get the world's tiniest gold star and three Brownie points. Instead I said, almost as inanely, "Wow. Are you having the baby?"

"No," she said. "It just took me a long time to make up my mind. I don't know why, I've never ever wanted a house crammed with children like Mum. I suppose it's just different when it's your own body."

"I suppose it must be," I agreed.

"So Madam Pomfrey's doing the spell on Monday."

"The actual abortion?" I said, disturbed, although I can't think why, by the thought of an abortion being performed by a school matron. I suppose the fact that Muggles have special clinics adds an air of ritual, a sense of the operation being separate from normal life. It didn't seem right to just waltz in and out of the Hospital Wing; although it turned out I was wrong anyway. "What's an abortion?" Ginny said curiously.

"You know, to get rid of the embryo."

"You don't get rid of it. It stops growing and gets absorbed back into your body. It's the _Resorpta _charm."

I thought of this and how odd it seemed, that the little creature living in your abdomen would go into reverse gear and just melt away.

My back mended. It still hurt like hell. I hobbled round the school like a ninety-year-old and was set a ten-foot DADA essay by a malicious Snape, who sneered that those of us who insisted on proving our masculinity via crude displays of physical power must be prepared to face the consequences. How I hated the evil shit.

Then there was Ginny's resorption to worry about. I kept getting the word mixed up in my head with "reputation", and god knows, there was Ginny's reputation to worry about as well. I wasn't sure what wizards and witches thought about underage pregnancy or resorptions, but I wasn't going to breathe a word about it to _anyone._

"Professor," I said nervously, "please can I have permission to skip Transfiguration on Monday?"

The McGonagall eyes narrowed. "What for?"

"It's... confidential," I said, trying to sound firm.

Her eyes widened, then narrowed again, then she gave the Nod of Doom. "I see. You may indeed accompany Miss Weasley, Potter. And, while you're at it, kindly ask Madam Pomfrey to teach you some Contraceptive Charms," she said acidly.

I was horrified. "It wasn't me!"

She looked very surprised at that. Her mouth made a little "oh". All she said, though, was "I'm very glad your back's feeling better, Potter." Then she gave me a Ginger Newt.

A vague notion that had been floating around in my head achieved sudden solidity. I dashed off to find Ginny and hung around her nervously.

"Hello, Harry," she said with a grin that made me feel happy to be alive. "Shall we go down to the lake?"

I hadn't been planning on that, but I wasn't much inclined to say no. The pain in my back suddenly vanished, and we went down to Squidland and stayed for quite a while. (No, I mean snogging, not shagging, you mucky buggers.) Later, while we were standing hand in hand and watching the sun go down, I stammered, "Er, Ginny, there's kind of something I want to ask you, but I'm, like, not quite sure how."

She just sort of blinked, so I babbled on. "You see, the thing about the resorption – like, you don't want to actually have a child – well, I was wondering like if that was because you were worried you might not be able to support it. So I just thought I should really ought to tell you that if you wanted to have the child I would, you know, help you to look after it."

"Oh, no, I've made up my mind," she said immediately.

"Right, yeah, I thought you had, I just thought I should say."

"Yeah, yeah, no, that's fine." She hesitated for a long time. "Except, er, is it you that... I mean, are you dead keen on having a family?"

"No!" I said, horrified. "No, no, all I meant was, you should do what you want and I'll give you a hand. I mean, if you want it. And if you have the child I'll, you know, support you and if you don't I'll also support you. So you just do what it is you want to do," I concluded, starting to feel that all this sex business was way more trouble than it was worth.

"Yeah, that's really nice of you." She paused. "I'm not sure what I want to do now."

"Oh."

"No, I'll still have the resorption, but, I mean, it was really nice of you to tell me."

"Thanks. I mean, oh good."

So odd.


	3. Metamorphosis

_**Chapter 3: Metamorphosis**_

_Week 23_

By Sunday I was flushed with relationship confusion and joy, not to mention my newly cast and so far unnecessary Contraceptive Charm. We were halfway to Voldie's cell before I even remembered I'd been chucked off my broom by proxy.

"Is he all right?" I asked the guard uncertainly; and he gave me only a blank stare. "Volde – You-Know-Who. Is he OK?"

He rolled his eyes uncomfortably. "Why shouldn't he be OK?"

"He got tortured. Last week."

"Did he?"

"Don't you know what goes on round here?" I said, half frustrated and half curious.

"No, I'm only Grade 1, don't know nothing," he said; not offended at all, more satisfied. He obviously didn't want to know.

I inched hesitantly past the curtain of flame, wondering whether Voldie would be horribly scarred, charred.

He wasn't; he was sitting up in bed looking almost bright and gleeful. "Hello, Harry," he said quite happily.

"Cheerful today, aren't we?" I said, amazed. "I thought you'd be in bits after getting tortured!"

"Oh, I was," he said indifferently. "But hey healed me. Amazing what hey'll do for you when he Chosen One'sss involved."

I put the books down on the end of his bed and said quietly, "You knew I was there, then."

"Nope. Hey told me. Repeatedly."

Oh. "Sorry," I chuckled apologetically. "I suppose they wouldn't shut up about it."

"Hat's one way of putting it," he said, face suddenly closed.

Dismay. "They _punished _you for it?"

He pulled a "duh" face.

"Well, _how? _I mean, if they can't torture you?"

The "duh" face intensified.

"THEY FUCKING DID IT AGAIN?!"

He laughed so much he almost rolled right off the bed. My seething did not abate.

"THEY TORTURE YOU, AND I FEEL IT, AND THEY PUNISH YOU FOR THAT BY TORTURING YOU – "

"Sorry," he said, suddenly no longer amused. "I don't know ih I eher intended to pass it on to you."

"IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT!"

"I planned to," he said indifferently, as if he thought I wouldn't mind. "I hought I could blackmail you into releasssing me."

Then his expression altered. He looked at me with flat, blank eyes that seemed to have frozen over.

It was the first time in months I'd seen him do a passable imitation of an evil dictator. I took an inadvertent step backwards.

"'He auhorities," he said carefully, "didn't like hat idea."

My voice had gone. I coughed a couple of times. "But they can't _do _anything to you," I said, "apart from torture you more."

"Oh, can't 'hey?" he said; because they would kill him.

"Is there a date for your execution?" I said, and his expression slipped again, briefly showing raw, unconditional terror; so "No," I said, embarrassed, "I haven't heard anything, it's just the way you were talking, I thought..."

"I don't know what'sss going on," he said curtly.

"Like I do!" I snapped.

Narrow-eyed. "What can you hink oh," he said, "that beginsss with H?"

Eh? "Hamster? Hovercraft? HP Sauce? Oh – Horcruxes."

"So you do know."

"Dumbledore told me. We've got rid of two of them. Three, if we count Nagini – I assume she's dead..."

"She is dead," he snapped, and it seemed he had felt more affection for her than Dumbledore had assumed; but when he could talk again he said, "Ssso. And ih you knew about 'he ohers, would you tell Dumbledore?"

I hesitated and said, "You're never going to get let out, you know."

No answer; or, no spoken reply.

"And I can't seem to get them to stop torturing you, even when they're doing it to me. Which I thought they would care about. So... if you were to... get killed, I suppose your suffering would be over."

Incredulity so deep it made me blush. "Hust for 'hat, you can bring me Alfred Bester's _Demolished Man _next week."

"Sorry."

"And you can tell Dumbledore 'hat I might hust still hahe an ace up my sleehe."

"What? You're going to _escape – "_

Snort. "Hance would be a hine hing. But he's not going to kill me ih I can help it."

I tried to sort out my emotions. It was no good; they were jumbled like spaghetti.

"I finished _Dreamsnake_," I said. "I liked it."

He managed a grin, which buoyed up my soul immeasurably.

"You did, did you?" he soughed. "What lesson did you draw from it?"

"That they killed the snake because they didn't understand it was harmless. Look, you've no right making a metaphor like that. You're not harmless."

He held up a stub of finger. "Neiher is he snake," he said. "Hat's what hey find out at he end. It can be very danherous ih it's not used properly."

I wavered. "Well? What do you think, then?"

He smiled, and answered in Parseltongue, "That great harm arose from the fact that no-one understood the snakes."

_Week 24_

"We're having trouble, Harry," Dumbledore told me, stirring a disproportionate amount of sugar into his tea. "The Ministry, as you might be aware, is in some confusion at the moment."

"Er, no," I said. "I don't know anything about the Ministry, really."

"Governments are always in tumult following the end of a war," he said calmly, "unless, of course, there is no-one left alive. That is certainly not the case at present, so let me sum it up like this: the present administration made itself deeply unpopular during the war, both by arresting the wrong people and by contributing almost nothing to your success. It also seemed, for a while, that you would die. The Ministry needs to make itself popular, Harry, and if one can't help the hero, the traditional route to popularity is to..." He raised his eyebrows and looked over the tops of his glasses.

"Do horrible things to the villain," I supplied. "But don't they know they're doing it to me as well? How are they supposed to..."

He held up a hand quietly, and I stopped.

"While you were in a coma," he said, "Voldemort could be tortured with impunity, and he was, very enthusiastically – "

"But I was unconscious for THREE MONTHS!" I shouted, horrified. "He was – you mean – he was tortured for – "

"Harry, please try to stay calm," he said gently, and while I was shaking he continued, "When you woke up, it became obvious that things had changed significantly. On the one hand, the Ministry finally had its victory; the hero was alive, the villain imprisoned, and public opinion very favourable. On the other, they were left asking themselves: What are we to do with Voldemort?"

"Give him life imprisonment!" I said. "Shut him up at the bottom of a pit! Just don't do _this!_"

Dumbledore sighed. "I don't know all the facts," he said, "but I think you are assuming two things. First, that there is nothing we want from Voldemort, and second, that there is any one person in charge of what is happening to him."

"The Minister!"

"Regrettably not."

"Then me! Why isn't it me? I'm the bloody saviour!"

He smiled sadly. "And what would _you _do with him?"

"Lock him in a box in my dormitory! _Anything!_... Sorry, Professor."

"I am glad to hear that, Harry. Now, my other point: you assume that it is merely for their own entertainment that the inhabitants of Azkaban torment Voldemort. You have forgotten, I think, that there is a great deal of information they would like to extract from him. Countless people disappeared during the First and Second Wars, and he may know where they are. He set traps that are proving tricky to defuse, and he cast Dark spells that we need to know how to unravel."

"Well, I'll do that!" I said. "He talks to me! Give me a list and I'll ask him on Sunday."

Dumbledore nobly restrained himself and let only a faint smile slip out. "I will make the necessary arrangements. As soon, that is, as I work out who precisely is in charge of Azkaban. I'm afraid that might take some time."

"Is it Dementors?" I said suspiciously.

"No," he said, "but that's all I'm certain of. It's hard to say what goes on in there."

The logical part my brain threw out sparks and I said "Well, can't we move them all _out _of there?!"

Dumbledore's shaggy eyebrows made a tectonic inward swoop. "We could," he said. "No doubt we could, if the Ministry agreed to cooperate, which is not completely without the realms of possibility. However, I think you are forgetting, once again, that the people inside Azkaban are extremely dangerou, and that we barely won this war. The relative peace that we presently enjoy, Harry, is something we cling onto with the tips of our fingers; and if Tom Riddle were to rise again, do you really think that he would treat us any better than we are presently treating him?"

"Do I _think _so?" I said incredulously. "I _know _so, sir. He tortured me before I fought him. He didn't do anything like as bad to me as they're doing to him now. It doesn't compare."

Dumbledore was silent for a long time, then nodded slightly without speaking. I fancied that he looked pitying and disappointed.

-

That night I was trapped inside Voldemort while he was... was... well. Anyway. It was like a dream, one of those appallingly tedious dreams where things keep on getting worse and worse but you can't wake up. It was no dream. I was peripherally amused by the notion while we scrabbled and screamed.

Then I woke up at 3:30am; and was left to wander agitatedly around the bathroom, shivering with disgust in between dry heaves, with no company whatsoever. I couldn't stand being inside. I got my Cloak and broomstick and headed out to the Quidditch pitch.

I looped absently around the grounds; up, down, round, with little snowflakes biting my face. The snow felt clean, calm. It was much better than anything human.

_Week 25_

Walked through the curtain of flame. Stopped in shock. Actually bobbed back hastily through the curtain before I'd realised what I was doing, and uncertainly poked my head forwards again, finally accepting: the room was completely different.

"Harry?" the voice said, hopeful but nervous. "Hat _is _you?"

"Yeah, it's me," I said, staring round the room; stunned. He watched me in silence. He didn't seem surprised.

No concrete cell any more. Instead: walls painted cream and mustard. Two enormous Georgian windows, spreading dull daylight across the room. A comfy-looking (albeit prehistoric) chair on wheels, a desk covered with a mess of papers; a rather dodgy painting on one wall, and on the other, a diagram of the human brain.

"Your bed's still the same," I said absently, sitting down on the chair. Fortunately, it turned out to be real.

"Hank you," he said, taking the books, and then, "Don't you recognise a pssssychoanalyst's couh?"

"No. Is that what it is? Why have you been sleeping on it?" I said, perplexed. He plucked randomly at the blanket and didn't answer.

I got up again, rather at a loss, and trundled round the room. I stopped in front of the painting and peered at it. Boats on a lake with cloying Victorian personages in the foreground. "This picture's really crap."

Voldemort gave a huge, genuine laugh, grinning so broadly I could see every one of his smashed teeth. "Hat's what I said. And, if you look, on the ceiling 'here's a crack shaped like a bloke's hace. A bloke who looks a bit like a pig. I once decided it was a portrait of the pyschoanalyssst. Better 'han a Rorschach."

Animated as he was, he was talking twice as fast as usual. The words slurred as though he were talking through a mouthful of baked beans, but I didn't mind missing bits of it as long as he was cheerful.

"Where are we, then?" I asked.

"My analyst's treatment room. Nineteen-hurty-sehen," he said indifferently.

"You had an analyst?"

"Orhanage sent me 'here."

"Did it do any good?"

He gave a horrible mirthless laugh, and couldn't seem to stop it, although he looked at me, frightened, and it morphed into a hysterical, nervous giggle.

I felt his fear of me like a bucket of ice cubes to the face. The shock faded away but the distance remained, a fuzzy, ungraspable miasma in between us. Fear gave me an inane kind of plastic wisdom, gagged all those wise, sarcastic things he would have said. Like, Is it good, to torture evil people? And I might have played devil's advocate for a bit, but ultimately I would have said, No.

But he didn't ask any more.

"So _why _are we here?" I said, sitting back down in the chair.

"Because I didn't like it. Isn't hat ohious?" he said harshly, fear still taking the edge off his tone.

"That's better. Come on, swear at me," I said, heartened. "Say, 'Stop your foolish dribbling, Potter'," or something like that."

He didn't, but he gave me a long glance, giggled again and said "It's hunny seeing you in 'hat chair. Makes it all seem like a hoke. Helps me hang on to what's real."

I looked around the dull room, and shivered. I didn't really like his analyst's taste in interior decoration much. "I don't know why it looks like this," I said aimlessly.

"It's a ssspell."

"Did you do it? I mean, has it appeared out of your nightmares or something, or did someone else put it here."

He blinked very slowly, giving me time to appreciate how huge his shadowed eyes looked like in that thin, skull-like face. "Well," he said, and laughed again, sounding close to tears; and "Somebody cast it."

"I suppose I should remove it," I said, and I trundled outside and said doubtfully, "_Finite incantatem_."

Pause. "It hlickered," the voice called. "Try it again."

Mustering all my defeating-Dark-Lords superpowerz, I bellowed, "FINITE INCANTATEM!"

After a moment I peeped through the curtain and saw him sitting in his little concrete cube again with a contented smile. "Better," he said. "Good hing you're here."

"I don't believe this," I said to the world at large, sitting down on the foot of his couch.

"Don't believe what?" he said. "Hat I had my head shrunk? Hat I hated it? Hat your ssside would do hese hings?"

I shivered. "You never told me," I began aimlessly. "Or you never told anyone, I never knew you were afraid of this."

"Why would I hahe told you?"

"You are telling me," I pointed out. "You're telling me, now."

I thought about torture. I thought how I had hurt him, and he had hurt me, and we had both been hurt together, in the same body. It seemed to me that the experience had brought us closer than anything else ever could; that we were pinned together like two moths on the same card.

When I left, he asked for Patrick Hamilton's _Gas Light._

_Week 26_

Life insisted on continuing at the usual pace. It was irritating and disorienting. I had to pretend to care about news, gossip, impossibly difficult Transfiguration homework and the appointment of a new Quidditch Captain, given that I was no longer fit for the post and Gryffindor's first match was next week. McGonagall asked me for a recommendation, but I didn't much feel like choosing between Ron and Ginny, so I left the final choice up to her.

Also, various Slytherins seemed to have it in for me. I would say I didn't care, but in all truth I was so preoccupied I didn't even notice. That situation persisted until Draco Malfoy confronted me in the corridor, upper lip ruched up to his eyebrows. He seemed even less enamoured with my person than usual.

"I know you're gay, Potter."

"You do?" I said. "Pity I missed that owl."

"I – " he started, but other humans arrived. Draco skulked shrunkenly until they'd all passed by, following me down to a place where not many people would see before shouting, "Potter!"

"What NOW?" I shouted back.

"They might think you're a hero. We know, don't we, you're just a smarmy hypocritical prick! How dare you! _How dare you!_"

Poor old Draco had clearly taken a Bludger to the head. "What the fuck?"

More people. He shrank back again. I walked away. He followed me. "You're running away from me, Corned Beef-Face!"

My face was a lot more scarred since I'd been tortured. I rolled my eyes at Draco's petty and juvenile taste in insults and said "I'm not running away from you. I don't know what you're talking about." 

Incadescent with rage. "BASTARD!" His wand appeared. Mine matched it out of sheer reflex. "Keep your hands off my Weasley!" he bellowed, and fired the Pineapple-Penis Curse.

"_Protego!" _I said automatically, and shot it back at him. He ducked just in time. I stared at him, agog; "So it was _you!_" I said, and hexed him to a pulp. I hadn't been in a fight with anyone since Voldemort, so I was mildly pleased to find my hand was still in.

Inevitably, dozens of people crowded round to watch and Colin Creevey started frantically taking photos. I eventually managed to push my way through them and stormed off to confront Ginny in the Gryffindor common room. Restraining the urge to point at her and roar "You had it off with Malfoy!", I sidled up to her like a donkey with a leg brace and mumbled "Ginny... Draco Malfoy just said it was him that got you pregnant."

"Then he's a liar," she said matter-of-factly. "I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole."

I gaped at her ridiculously for a moment and then grinned equally ridiculously for a similar length of time. Then my face fell and I muttered, "Well, he was being pretty weird. He screamed at me and hexed me and he said 'Keep your hands off my Weasley'," I intoned with a disdainful shrug.

"Then it's a pisstake."

"No, it _wasn't _a pisstake. He was really, really serious," I corrected her absently. My tone must have annoyed her because she snapped back, "Harry. I wouldn't do _anything _with him. Whoever he's talking about, _it's not me_," and then there was a silence as we calculated precisely how many other Weasleys there were in the castle and realised who Draco was shagging. Ginny shot sparks out of her eyes and marched up to the boys' dorm, and I followed her feebly with the knowledge that there would shortly be a great cataclysm which I could do nothing to prevent.

After that, facing Snape re: Draco was pretty much an afterthought. The words "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE SHAGGING THE FERRET!" were still echoing through my skull as I wandered idly into the staff room to be tackled by the livid Heads of House.

"Well, Potter," Snape said in a whisper that would no doubt have been very frightening if I hadn't developed a fairly good sense of proportion about these things, "what sort of punishment do you think should be meted out to someone who randomly curses the _same _student twice in one year?"

"What, Malfoy?" I said. "Detention should sort him out. His cursing's not up to much."

"Potter, this isn't funny," McGonagall said severely. "Whatever Mr Malfoy said to you does not justify putting him in the hospital wing."

"What, even though he called me gay (which, like, isn't an insult but I thought he meant it as one) and a bastard and Corned-Beef-Face and said I was snogging his boyfriend?"

"Yes," McGonagall said, unfazed.

"And made me think that him and Ginny...?"

McGonagall knew about Ginny's resorption, whereas Snape did not. She paused and frowned.

"And he tried to curse me, yet again."

"We do not share your view, Potter, that cursing is your prerogative alone," Snape said silkily. "Although I know that your much trumped-up exploits in May... blah, blah," and said the usual stuff about how I was an attention-seeking prat.

"Funny," I said. "I'd have thought you'd sound more pleased that he's locked up. I can let him out on Sunday, if you want."

"What makes you think you will be allowed to see him on Sunday, Potter?" he purred.

"I beg your pardon?" said McGonagall.

"Hang on," I said, mockery vanishing, "you can't do that. They're expecting me. And it's none of your business in the first place."

"Perhaps you should have thought of your charitable duties to the Dark Lord before you irresponsibly cursed another student."

"Severus, stop being so childish. Potter – "

"Is there anyone you don't treat like dung?" I said. "He's been waiting two weeks to see me, _in Azkaban_. I'm his only visitor."

Snape said softly, "Oh, really?"

"_Severus_," McGonagall said acerbically, "if you haven't observed, Harry is in my house and I will determine his punishment, and the question of whether he will be allowed to continue his visits to Azkaban has nothing to do with you or Mr Malfoy..." and she dished out detention for the rest of the month, ordered me to apologise to Malfoy (which I would have done anyway) and told me to be less rash in future. I barely heard a word because I was caught in a stare with Snape. My hands were actually shaking.

-

"Sorry about that," I said.

"Yeah." Ron, sprawled on his bed, stared into the middle distance for some time with an expression of surpassing disgruntlement. Presently he asked, "You're _not _shagging him, are you?"

"Ron, I wouldn't shag him with a bargepole, even if he wasn't with you."

"Mm." He still looked worried. "Is he with anyone else?" he asked in a would-be casual tone.

"I don't know, do I?"

"But you haven't heard..."

"No."

"Mm." Slightly more chuffed. "Did he sound angry? When he thought I was cheating on him."

"Mad as hell," I assured him. "He screamed his head off. Oh, and he aimed a Pineapple-Prick at me, but I dodged."

"Well, if he's getting possessive he'll want to hang onto me, then," Ron said happily. Pause. "He'd fucking better after everything I've..." Mutter mutter.

"Ron," I said, absolutely fascinated, "what's he like in bed?"

This was not actually what I meant to say. I meant, is he as scornful and aggressive during your tender love scenes as he is the whole of the rest of the time. Ron, however, thought I meant something else. He puffed his chest out, looked smug and said "Like I'd have wasted all this on someone who wasn't fit." Then I got a very long account of their courtship, first snog and numerous fights, which had to be concluded in a whisper because Neville and Seamus were going to bed.

When Draco was fully healed he initiated the unnerving practice of hanging around Ron whenever they weren't in class. His repertoire included aggressive flirting, resentful complaints about the way Ron treated him (while, incidentally, still doing all the things Ron told him to), and hysterical protestations of love. Recalling the Lavender Brown thing, I loyally refrained from pointing out Ron's predilection for over-emotional, clingy blondes.

_Week 27_

"Sorry, they didn't have _Gas Light_," I apologised as I strode into Voldie's cell, books in hand. "They sent me a different one instead."

There was a pause. The blanket slowly erected itself and a sleepy head peeped out, miraculously giving the impression of being tousled without actually having any hair. "Book? Which book?"

I lay down next to him and sorted through the pile. "Er. _Metamorphosis_, by Franz Kafka."

Voldemort snorted, snorted again and said, "A person slowly turning into a monster. I hink hat's really quite appropriate."

"No, you're not," I said nastily. "You were a monster before. Now you're slowly becoming human."

His face acquired an unreadable expression, an odd, curdled look. I felt ashamed. "Sorry for saying that," I said.

He laughed until it hurt him, which of course wasn't very long. "_Sorry_. Sorry indeed. You're a hery peculiar boy, Harry," he purred, wagging the remnant of a finger at me with a pitying grin. "Why aren't you torhuring me? If I were you, I would curssse me until 'here was nohing left."

"There's already not much left," I said, which was about as cruel as I got.

"But here you are: bringing me booksss, talking to me, trying to make my lihe easier."

"That's because I'm a 'good person' and you're, like, a psychopathic maniac."

"It must be hery boring being a 'good person'," he mused.

"No, it isn't," I said irritably. "It's not-torturing that lets me do all the stuff that's enjoyable. I mean, I couldn't walk out of here after, you know, torturing you, and go back to school and talk to people and go shopping and, and live normal life."

"Certain people do," he said.

"_Sick _people. People who are _wrong_."

"But – "

"NO!" I cut him off. "I _like _being like this. I'll never get off on hurting people, I don't want to be a Dark Lord, I want a nice calm boring life with friends and ordinary people and no battles, and if you think that's boring then fuck you."

"I won't disagree wih you, Harry. I can't."

"No, you can't. Because you are _wrong_. – Did I tell you everything that happened?"

"...No?"

"Well, my girlfriend got pregnant and..." I began and gave him the whole long, convoluted, possibly rather boring story, because his eyes started glazing over halfway through.

When he'd finally assimilated most of the narrative he said slowly, "'He wretched Malhoy boy is wih a Weasley?"

"And?" I said sharply. "He doesn't deserve Ron!"

"Quite posssibly," he agreed. "I hope he knows 'hat, too."

"He nearly killed him," I muttered. "He sent poisoned mead to Dumbledore, the fucking maniac."

"I know 'hat," he said. "It was I who ordered him to kill Dumbledore, ih you recall."

"Can I ask you something? Why him? He was totally useless." Before he had a chance to reply, I suddenly remembered Dumbledore saying, _His anger was terrible to behold... _"Was it to punish Lucius for fucking up at the Ministry?"

"Hardly matters now."

"I remember Dumbledore saying you were so mad about it that Lucius was probably 'secretly glad to be safe in Azkaban'."

Voldie' reaction to this was extraordinary. He stared at me with his mouth open, then contorted his face into an awful grimace, and then finally threw his head back and gave a shrill, sniggering laugh.

"SHUT IT!" I said, and he did.

"There was stuff I was supposed to tell you before," I said, "we didn't get onto it, what with all that... weird stuff."

He laughed again, a proper laugh this time, and said "You looked so hunny in 'hat chair."

I smiled too, because I was trying to be all official with him and he didn't care; but I had to talk to him, so the smile faded.

"You got tortured and, like, I'm there."

"Are you," he said roughly, staring at the wall.

"I asked Dumbledore how come they can't just stop torturing you."

"Mm."

"He said, first, that no-one's in charge."

"Doesn't sssurprise me."

"And second, they want you to give them information. About people you killed and stuff."

"About people I _killed?_" he said. "I'm all hor doing hings horoughly, but isn't it a bit late in 'he day hor that?"

"Disappeared, people who disappeared. You might know where they were buried and stuff."

"Buried! Since when do I bury people personally? What d'you hink 'he minions are hor?"

"Oh, shut up, shut up, you're not cooperating."

"Potter, it's all a bloody hoke. Hey don't want any hucking inhormation. Torhuring me hor inhormation? You hink 'hat's what hey're doing? Hey're torhuring me because hey like it. Hat's bloody why."

"Not listening. Not listening. Not listening," I repeated, hands over my ears, until he'd stopped shouting. Then I said, "Don't give me that crap. Dumbledore told me himself."

"Gihe me my books," he snarled, and started reading violently. I turned the pages for half an hour, but _Metamorphosis _bored me silly.

"You could get me 'he books hrom 'he corner," he said.

"How did you get them over there, anyway?" I asked, getting up and bringing his stack of books from the corner of the cell.

He rolled his eyes at me. "_I _didn't put hem 'here."

"Didn't they realise you wouldn't be able to reach them?"

"_Yesss_, Potter."

I stayed silent. It was odd: I could believe they would Crucio him, obviously, but I couldn't believe they would put his books where he couldn't get to them. It was just so _petty_.

I sat back on the bed and said, "Give me more torturing tips, then."

"Aren't any tips to gihe," he said. "Long as 'hey're in enough pain, you can sssay whatever you want to 'hem. Whistle He Bridhe Oher He Riher Kwai. Say whateher seems like a good idea at he time. Ssay whateher gratihies your ego. Keep saying he same clihé until it's hust sounds.

"Is 'he guard 'here?" he added.

"Yes he is. Why would I let you out if the guard wasn't there? I hate you."

"I don't hate you."

"You don't?"

"No." Pause. "I LOAHE you." Another pause, then, with an awful grin, "D'you know why I said hat?"

"No," I said, utterly baffled.

"Becaussse I know you won't torhure me hor saying it. I can get away wih hings, wih you. I hate you more, because I am ahraid," he creaked in that blank, monotous voice, which added a surreal note. "So I hate myselh most oh all."

That was back when he could still say resounding things.


	4. Villette

_**Chapter 4: Villette**_

_Week 28_

Gryffindor, captained by Ron, trounced Slytherin. King Weasley appeared to have been promoted to Emperor, and he hugged Draco openly on the pitch. I tried not to feel jealous. It didn't work.

_Week 29_

"Where are you going this Christmas, Harry?" Ron said in a very important and po-faced way at the end of November, which made me burst out laughing and tell him he was henpecked, because he'd never once bothered to make plans for Christmas until about a week before the holidays. He sheepishly admitted Draco's influence and revealed that he would be spending the festive season with the Malfoys.

"Wow," I said, seriously disturbed. "You're meeting his mum? Narcissa?"

"He says she doesn't mind," Ron said robustly. "In fact, they could do with a bit of, you know, support."

Quite; not from me, though. That left me wondering where I _was _going over Christmas; the dread spectre of Grimmauld Place rose its head. I consulted Ginny apprehensively; she told me to stop being so stupid because I was going with her to the Burrow, of course. That cheered me up.

So, a trip to Hogsmeade to buy some presents. The air was full of heavy wet feathers that collapsed, on the ground, into farting grey slush. I was in agony; Voldemort had broken every bone in my body when I was at his place, and I had only recently discovered that they all twinged simultaneously in cold weather. The little bones in my ears felt particularly horrible.

I browsed the various windows. Zonko's had never reopened; a dodgy gift shop had arisen in its place. I stared pensively at the merchandise, unconsciously jiggling the change in my pocket until Hermione came up to me and told me to stop because it looked as though I were committing a lewd act in public.

"Sorry," I mumbled, brooding too deeply to even get embarrassed, "but I'm trying to choose a present for someone and I don't know what to buy."

To my astonishment, a deeply knowing look suddenly came over her face. "Oho," she said. "I think I know what you want there."

"You do?" I spluttered.

"I do. Come with me."

She marched confidently across the road and into Gladrags, leaving me to flounder in the slush. I was totally bamboozled.

Hermione nudged me. "I happen to know," she said with a sly wink, "that the person you are buying gifts for is a size 10."

"He is?" I said blankly, and saw her face change. "Er. Sorry, Hermione, it's not for you. Or Ginny, either," I twigged at last. "It's, er, it's for Voldemort."

Hermione blinked. "Ah," she said, and hustled me out of the shop before the assistant could grasp us in its avaricious claws. In the relative safety of the street she told me off for embarrassing her in public, and I nodded away, privately noting that she actually looked comforted that I wasn't buying wooing-gifts for Draco or Ron. Then she added severely, "You're buying presents for Dark Lords instead of for Ginny?!"

"It wasn't me that got her pregnant!" I said indignantly.

"I know, she told me," Hermione said serenely. "She thinks you're gay as well now. You don't know who it was, do you?" she added _sotto voce_.

"No, I don't, and I am NOT gay," I chuntered. "And I'll buy her a present if you want, but I don't know why you're so wound up about it. I already bought her that sweater thing."

"Six weeks ago."

"What?... Fine. Is this her Christmas present?"

"You mean you haven't _got _her a Christmas present?!" she said, scandalised. "It's nearly December already!"

"Hermione, not all of us do our Christmas shopping a month in advance!"

"Yes, but you are supposed to put in a bit more effort when it's for the person you're in love with!"

"What have you got for Ron?" I said with genuine interest, and then realised what I'd said. There was a silence that lasted into the next astrological age, then Hermione trundled off to the gift shop.

A marble hairbrush was duly purchased for Ginny, and I was finally able to browse Dervish & Banges for something an ex-Dark Lord might want. Unfortunately I had almost no idea where to start, and the only thing I was definite about was that it ought to be something he could hold onto.

"You mean, like... a teddy bear?" Hermione said, fascinated.

"No," I said thoughtfully. "I'm worried he might feel insulted."

Her face was a study of mixed emotions, with disgust and pity predominating, but I was distracted. Eventually I toddled back to the gifty shop and almost immediately saw a carved wooden owl that reminded me strikingly of Hedwig, despite the fact that it was short, fat, stylised and conker-brown. I plucked it off the shelf and marched firmly up to the counter before my luck failed and things went back to going wrong.

"Where are _you _going for Christmas?" I asked Hermione belatedly as we squelched back up to Hogwarts; and she pressed her lips together until they disappeared. "Val d'Isére with mum and dad," she said, which made me wish I'd never asked.

Scuffing the snow off my boots in the Great Hall, I finally twigged that she'd never got it together with Ron. He was shagging an ex-Death Eater instead, and that was what was causing the problem. Duh.

-

"Can you think of anything I can give Ginny for Christmas?" I said absently on Sunday, and Voldemort gave this stupid question tremendous, serious thought and finally said, "She usssed to like Prittie Kitties."

"Pardon?"

"Toy cats, like dolls. When she was elehen. She might not now, I suppose."

"Oh – when you were in the diary – yeah." I thought it monstrously improbable that Ginny would still like Prittie Kitties at sixteen, and in any case she would doubt my heterosexuality again if I bought her one, but I was knocked out that he'd made a suggestion at all. Perhaps it was an evil plot.

"I can't hink what else," he pursued anxiously. "Oh! She wanted her own broom. Hery dehinite about 'hat."

"She's got one of her own now," I said, and fought down my chest-monster, which had arisen with a great roar at the thought of his sharing her life, knowing her secrets. What else did he know? She'd told him how she felt about me, I remembered him saying so in the Chamber. "Was it you who wrote that frigging poem?"

"What – ?"

"'His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad, his hair is as black as a blackboard'...?"

He shrank away from me and said apprehensively, "It seemed hunny at the time. I didn't know you 'hen. I didn't..."

"Oh, grow up and stop acting like Wormtail," I said, pity flipping abruptly over to disgust; his betrayed, abject face haunted me for weeks.

Consumed with guilt, I changed the topic to books. "I liked _Lud-in-the-Mist_," I said. "It was very weird. But good fun."

Voldie's brain clicked audibly into gear. "_Lud-in-the-Mist_... ah. And what lesson did you draw hrom it?"

"Not to take mushrooms. And that if you look at the bad guy from a different angle he's not the bad guy at all. You've told me that before, you don't need to keep hammering the message home."

His mouth curved slowly, like a leaf curling up in autumn. "Perhaps I was telling you not to make a pet of 'he dead."

"You're _not _dead. – Listen, that Alfred Bester book, I never got round to telling you what I thought of it."

"You brought it. It'sss here."

"You shouldn't read it," I said, angry. "It'll give you nightmares."

He considered this, then twitched a shoulder indifferently. "I'he read worse."

"You're a twat," I said, suddenly frustrated, and he sniggered at me silently and said, "Go on, 'hen. Tell me what you hought."

"That the stuff they did at the end – it's, like, worse than killing him. If they killed him, then at least it would be quick."

"You don't hink 'he' was still alive?" he said in an uninterested tone.

"No. His personality, you mean? His, like, his self? No, that was why they did it! That was the whole _point_."

This earned me a tiny nod.

"And... and... I can't really..." I said, inadvertently adding a nervous giggle.

"'Here's no point in being embarrassed _now_," he said. "Hust say it."

"It was because they thought they were being kind," I said. "And he was grateful."

No response from Voldemort. I turned to look at him and found he was grinding his teeth so hard his face was bisected by wales of quivering muscle.

"But it's set in America," I announced brightly. "So, I mean, obviously they do execute people over there."

He laughed until it seemed likely a few internal organs would be expelled and said, "Muggles were hanged in 'his country until I was 'hirty-six."

"Oh."

"'Here are no 'good' countries. You can't get away hrom it, Potter. Don't try."

I didn't try.

I obviously hadn't learnt my lesson from the Ginny's-Christmas-present thing, though, because during this unfortunate hiatus in the conversation, I asked Voldemort for help with my Transfiguration homework.

"What's the question?" he said immediately.

"Er – Gladys Midreague's theory of convolution. Thing. You have to do a mathematical proof of how the amplitude is, er, converse to the..."

"When you say converse, do you mean in inverse proportion?" he demanded.

"Er, yes. In inverse proportion to the duration."

"_Durahion?_" he said incredulously. "Oh, no. It can't be. You must hahe written it down wrong. It must be densssity."

"Oh – is that what the 'd' stands for? Oh, well – "

Within seconds my homework had been ripped unceremoniously from my hands and he was poring over it, muttering to himself. "D'you hahe some paper?"

"Righto," I said, discombobulated. I retreated to the outer part of the cell and conjured paper and a pen. When I walked back through the flames he was trying exasperatedly to grip the pen with his stumpy hands.

"I can write wihout _hingers_," he muttered. "It's 'he humb hat's 'he problem. Do you need 'he hull prooh? Becaussse hat's about sehenty pahes long. I don't hink I can get it hinished behore you leahe."

"No, please don't," I said, "just the short one. It's probably not that important – "

Too late. He'd already started to scrawl line upon line of xs and ys. "I said NO, Voldie," I said, exasperated, and he dropped the pen in horror. "Oh, go on, then," I muttered, trying not to feel too guilty; and I lay on the floor and read his book while he got the short proof finished.

"Thank you," I mumbled awkwardly, and hugged him lightly. He seemed to shrink while I did it, as though I were a heavy garment he was wearing; a suit of armour.

I walked away still picturing his pleading face. It didn't help that it looked just like the moon. Every night I saw his sweet, eerie mug in the sky, and the craters, mares, whatever they're called, looked just like his stained eyesockets.

_Week 30_

Have you ever seen the moon, Remus? Do you remember it? Sorry for that weird question, I don't know how to start this letter, so I thought I'd ask the first question that came into my mind. I have others. Lots of others. It's awkward because I don't know how much you already know.

I don't even know if you're all right, and I hope you are. I asked Ron and Hermione if they knew how you were doing but they hadn't seen you since I was in hospital. I don't know what you're doing nowadays. It seems stupid asking you all these things when you might be in St. Mungo's for all I know. (If you are: does the chocolate pudding still taste like cabbage?)

Right. Information. Voldemort is being kept in Azkaban and I go there once every two weeks to visit him. (And take him books.) He's being tortured. Every time they... (Crossed out) Sometimes when they torture him I feel it as well. When that happens it's a disaster as I promptly lose conciousness, fall over and hit my head on whatever's nearby, or fall off my broom if I'm playing Quidditch. Then the Azkabanians punish Voldie for not using Occlumency properly and the shock of the punishment makes him lose control of his Occlumency and it all starts again. Scrimgour said the Azkabanians would never use Crucio again, but it still keeps happening. Dumbledore says he doesn't know who's in charge and, anyway, they need information. Voldemort's getting worse.

I take books to Wormtail. He's got awful taste. Have you ever wanted to visit him? (Sorry, I told you the questions were stupid) I keep thinking about the nature of forgiveness and I'm not sure I understand it at all.

I have no idea what I want to do with my life now I'm not trying to defeat Voldie.

I hope I'll see you at Christmas.

Harry.

Dear Harry,

I'm perfectly well, and thank you for writing. I must warn you, though, to expect a frightening missive from Alastor Moody within the next few days. He found your letter and read it, and he's not pleased that you're visiting Voldemort. His eye popped out and I suspect he's sent a Howler.

For that matter, I can see where he's coming from. I don't mean to discourage you from your activism; that said, I don't understand the nature of forgiveness either, and I don't understand why anyone would want to do what you're doing. I have never felt the slightest desire to visit Wormtail. Then again, I've never been trapped in his mind while he is tortured. Were you exaggerating when you said that you "fall over and hit your head on whatever's nearby"? I thought you must be, but I've been asking around and it seems it's the truth. We find that very disturbing, and Arthur will be asking around at the Ministry to find out what they're playing at. We simply can't understand why they want to kill the Chosen One.

You say it's difficult deciding what to do with your life; I should imagine it is. It's hard to think what advice to give, since the Ministry will probably give you whatever job you want, but your life will never be "normal". I would recommend you keep up with your schoolwork (although I'm sure you are), since NEWTs are always useful, and then take some time off to think things over. If it helps, you're in good company – I've never really decided.

And have I ever seen the moon? – Not as a human. It looks different through a wolf's eyes. Perhaps that seems odd, but one doesn't think about it.

Remus.

Oh, so he'd told everyone! The cheeky bugger! I tried to figure out whether I was pleased that Mr Weasley now knew I was visiting Voldemort in between sharing his torment, and decided I definitely wasn't. This helpfully distracted me from the far more troubling discovery that Remus didn't believe in criminal justice, or whatever wizards called it. It didn't seem to make sense. He'd always seemed like such a nice bloke...

_Sirius began rolling up his sleeves. "Shall we kill him together?"_

"_Yes, I think so," said Lupin grimly... "You should have realised. If Voldemort didn't kill you, we would. Goodbye, Peter."_

...OK, scratch that. He'd always been pretty scary, if only I'd had the sense to look. It was me that had stopped him killing Wormtail that first time, too, and that had buggered things up enormously at the time. He must think I was a right wimp.

I tried to see things from his point of view. It didn't help. I was experiencing for the first time the concept of a nice, reasonable, serious person who reckons it's all right to do... that. I call it the "Bodysnatchers" feeling. I suppose everyone's got to get it over with at some point, and seventeen seems a reasonable age in retrospect; but... sod it. It always makes my blood run cold.

If Azkaban didn't kill Voldie, Lupin would. Goodbye, Lupin.

Anyway. I went and found Luna Lovegood, who was in charge of opening my post. I don't know if I mentioned that bit. One day while I'd been grappling with my cataract of correspondence she'd wandered past and remarked dreamily, "Oh, so it's true that people are sending you hundreds of letters. I thought Ginny was exaggerating."

"Sadly not," I said, getting hit on the nose by a very heavy parcel.

"I bet they say very strange things," she fluted. "They keep writing letters like that to my dad, for some reason. I write the same letter back to them every time thanking them for making their views known and saying the editor is thinking over all the points they've raised. Would you like me to do that?"

"YES, PLEASE. Except, well, maybe a different standard reply."

"A heart that is bountiful, generous and kind/Is worth more than a thousand intelligent minds," she recited, which I suspect must be a Hufflepuff poem, and tripped off to do whatever Luna Lovegoods do in their leisure time. Since then my post situation had improved immeasurably, not that it could have deteriorated much.

I didn't think even she would appreciate a Howler from Mad-Eye Moody, though, so next morning I trundled dutifully down to the Great Hall to endure the iron maiden of avid student stares. I only got about thirty letters, but none appeared to be a Howler. I was just puzzling over this when there landed in front of me a parcel around the same size and shape as a turnip; I opened it absently and discovered a warty, humming green thing.

"What the hell – " I began, puzzled.

"GET IT AWAY FROM ME!" Ron yelped, trying to jump up from the table and spilling porridge down his front; but that didn't really matter because at that moment the turnip-thing exploded and covered me, Hermione and Ron with orange gunge that smelt like a blocked drain. There was pandemonium for about five minutes while we were quarantined and accused of setting off Dungbombs in the Great Hall, and I protested I'd done no such thing; and Ron kept shouting "Someone sent him a Gribsplatter!" until Hermione told him to shut up, which made me feel a lot more cheerful because it was just like old times.

"A Gribsplatter? Who sent you a Gribsplatter, Potter?" McGonagall demanded, eradicating the gunge and plucking a shiny white letter from the ruins of my breakfast. How it stayed so clean inside that thing, I'll never know.

"Er, it was Mad-Eye Moody," I said. "He read one of my letters to Remus."

"Oh," McG said, with a weariness that spoke of enduring the fake Moody's company on the staff bench for an entire year. Barty Crouch Jr's impersonation had perhaps been a little too enthusiastic.

POTTER – What d'you think you're doing, going into You-Know-Who's cell? You've had plenty of crazy ideas, boy, but this time you must be out of your tiny mind. THAT MAN IS DANGEROUS. – If you can even call him a man. If we geninly have to risk someone by letting them go near him, WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE YOU? _Anyone_ else would be better. He's a cunning, desperate, deranged monster and it would only take him a second to kill you.

I'll be writing to Dumbledore to tell him to put a stop to this.

– Mad-Eye Moody

Oh, thank you, Remus! You had to leave my letter lying around where that maniac could read it, and now I'm covered from head to foot in shit and he's trying to stop me visiting Voldie! Constant dimwittedness ought to be his bloody catchphrase.

I read the letter again, only partially noticing Lavender Brown pinching her nose tight shut and spraying me with perfume. I was crazy, was I? Voldie was deranged, eh?

AND WHY DID THEY THINK THAT WAS?

_Week 31_

His cell was on fire. The walls, the floor, the ceiling: dark, lurching flames, stinking of soot. Even the bed frame looked blackened and scorched. A tearstained Voldemort was sprawled on the floor; half-choked by the collar, unable to climb back onto the bed, which appeared to have been dragged about three feet from its usual position, but brandishing a sheaf of paper with a triumphant and blissful expression.

I started to back out of the room, then stopped, ashamed of myself.

"I hinished it!" he announced proudly.

"Yes, I know you did, you're very clever," I said, dropping the Christmas tree and bending down to help him get back into bed. "You hang on – wait a minute – "

"I did it. I got it hinished," he babbled, and while he was rambling on I raced back outside and cast Finite Incantatem.

When I returned to the cell the fire and smoke had vanished, except from my nightmares. Voldemort, beaming at me from his bed, hadn't even noticed.

"It's all done," he said.

I picked up the Christmas tree, which was only the little tabletop kind about two feet tall, and set it down near the end of the bed. I felt dazed. "Right. What is? Look, what the fuck happened?"

His face crumpled and a few more tears appeared. "He hrew it across he room so I couldn't hinish it hor you. But I did!"

He carried on in this vein and I slowly twigged that he had thrown himself off the bed and dragged it across the floor, throttling himself in the process, to get to _my Transfiguration homework_, which in any case had been handed in last Thursday. He shoved it into my hands eagerly, and I stared at the fat wedge of paper, the aforementioned seventy pages of mathematical proof, all of which had been written in tiny, awkward handwriting as if by some divinely precocious one-year-old; maimed digits scratched out by maimed digits, a gift of numbers between people who weren't really all that brilliant with words.

"It's all 'here," he assured me desperately, blinking appeasingly. "I did it hor you."

My chest-monster was ousted by its much less familiar cousin, a strange, overwhelming feeling in my guts and chest that crawled up my throat and tried to escape through my mouth. I crunched it, but it came out through my eyes instead; to my horror, an enormous drop of saline fell on the first page and blurred one of the numbers.

"Voldie!" I said in a panic. "I've cried on it! Hang on a minute," and I blotted the stain as carefully as possible and then tried to work out whether the obscured number had been a 7 or a 2.

"Well, it's got to be a sehen 'here," Voldie adjudicated, and I cast about for a way to shut him up before he started to explain the whole proof to me; so I carefully wrote in a 7, then very softly and precisely sealed his mouth.

He'd already tortured me and seen me crying, after all, so in terms of intimacy I supposed this didn't make much difference.

It cheered him up, anyway; and elicited a very agreeable change in his demeanour, since he soon took control and started directing operations. I was very happy to let him, as I had no idea what I was doing. When I got ready to leave, I was aware that the prisoner/visitor relationship had gone the way of the tyrant/archnemesis; so, "What book d'you want?" I said. "_Romeo and Juliet?_"

"You've got no imagination, Potter," croaked Voldie. "Bring me _Villette_."


	5. The Price Of Salt

_**Chapter 5: The Price Of Salt**_

_**Week 32**_

I spent the day after my visit to Voldemort musing on how many bodily manifestations seemed like a good idea only at the time. I was enduring a severe sex-and-crying hangover.

I wanked frantically for the next two weeks, trying to prove to myself that I was attracted to people who weren't murderers. After all, I'd fancied Cho, and Ginny, and Professor Sinistra (slightly), and the Weasley twins, and Oliver Wood (only in first year, but still), and Tom Riddle... oh, OK, scratch that last one.

Anyway, I couldn't very well have wild sex with Ginny, since that would be using her, or with anyone else, since that would be cheating on her; and you couldn't very well host an orgy at Hogwarts in any case. My panicky shag-spree took place in my imagination.

I handed the seventy pages of mathematical proof in to McGonagall. I expect that sounds weird, but I was curious.

They came back with a report card:

GRADE: O.

COMMENTS:

I see you haven't changed, Mr Riddle.

_Week 33_

Christmas. Ron trundled off for his no doubt enviably jolly tryst with Draco and Narcissa. Hermione set off equally cheerfully to go skiing. This would be the first Christmas since we'd met in which we would all be apart.

Never mind; I was delighted to be having fun with the Weasleys, although it was so nice to have jolly thoughts to offset the Voldieness that I completely forgot about Ron's sex life and Ginny's resorption. I was forcibly reminded when I was confronted at the table by older Weasley siblings, who shook me mock-solemnly by the hand while smirking like Malfoys.

"What's this for?" I said, bewildered.

Bill and Charlie were too decorous to reply, but sniggered loudly. It was up to George to say proudly, "Well, Harry, we've received proof positive of your virility, via our little sister."

"It's not _mine!_" I yelped, finally cottoning on just as they all burst into laughter. (I presume they knew that already, else they'd have been trying to beat me up.) Ginny and Molly, however, were not impressed.

"I think that's enough of that, thank you," Molly said frostily, "at the dinner table."

"It wasn't Harry," said Ginny. "As _if _it was Harry! He was in a coma!"

"Thank you for that, Ginny," said Bill. "I've now got images of you in St. Mungo's, breaking into the ward and straddling poor unconscious Ha..."

"BILL!"

"Well, who was it, then?" said Fred.

"Look, it wasn't me, Fred," I said desperately, thoroughly unnerved by the demented glint in Molly's eye. If she really _did _think I was the despoiler of her baby, now would be a good time to correct the impression. "We haven't had... er..."

"Sex," the plain-speaking Ginny supplied.

"Well, one of you did, young lady," Molly said dangerously.

At which point Ginny said, "Oh mum, it wasn't Harry, he's a virgin!"

"I AM NOT!"

"You're not?" said Fred with great interest.

"NO! Well, how far are we talking about? Like, third base, or..."

The whole table descended into chaos as Molly thumped the table, the twins burst out laughing, Ginny eyeballed me in a very horrible manner and Charlie and Bill started earnestly defining virginity. I missed this completely because I was absently pondering the philosophical implications of oral sex.

"I don't think it makes any difference," I decided.

"No difference!" spluttered George through a mouthful of sprouts. Fortunately he choked at that point.

"No," I murmured. "It's the same in terms of..." I was thinking 'intimacy', but I couldn't bring myself to say that at a table full of seasonal Weasleys, especially since poor Arthur was still just sat there blinking.

"Well, let's take a poll," said Bill. "All those who thinks third base is the same as going all the way, please raise your hands..."

Nobody raised a hand, not even me, since I was still thinking absently about Voldie. Molly complained that this was a poor conversational topic for Christmas and Fred demanded to know how oral sex was supposed to be the same as the full monty.

"Well," I began.

"Because, Harry, I think you've forgotten the pregnancy part."

"What?" I said blankly, then remembered he thought I was talking about women and said hastily, "Oh. Oh yes," reaching for the spuds to cover my confusion.

It's always surprising that someone as insensitive as Fred can display such horrible ingenuity. I think he gets it from Molly. He gazed at me for several moments with a terrible glint in his mischievous eye, then suddenly pronounced, "It's a man."

I dropped the spuds in my lap. Cutlery went flying. I the middle of all this I give a single, aghast glance at Fred, and that was enough. "HAHA! I KNEW IT!" he shouted.

"Our second uphill gardener, after Ron!" exulted George.

"Fred, you're so dead if you don't shut up," threatened Ginny.

"_Stop that, now!_" said Molly.

"What?" George said sweetly. "I mean, Harry's gay, Ron's gay and Ginny's had a resorption. Does anyone else have any..."

But that finally triggered the Full-Scale Molly Rant, so we never got to find out whether anyone else had revelations, and Ginny never got to stab George with a steak knife either, which appeared to disappoint her. In the meantime I remembered that I definitely wasn't a virgin anyway, so the whole thing had been a bit pointless; and now I'd accidentally outed myself to the Weasleys. Ginny was grimly silent for the rest of the day. On balance, though, it was still better than Fleur singing "A Cauldron Full Of Hot, Strong Love".

I would have said the situation couldn't get more embarrassing, but then Remus, Tonks, Kingsley and Moody turned up on Boxing Day and I found it could indeed. They marched into the kitchen as if they'd come to arrest someone and, after making fake conversation for half an hour, frog-marched me into Ron's bedroom.

Moody: VOLDEMORT IS TRYING TO KILL YOU! HE WILL POSSESS YOUR BODY, DEVOUR YOUR SOUL, AND TAKE OVER THE WIZARDING WORLD!

Kingsley: We're a bit worried about your visiting Voldemort, Harry.

Moody: HE WILL KILL YOU, BRING YOU BACK AS AN INFERIUS, AND STRANGLE DUMBLEDORE WITH YOUR GREY, MAGGOTY HANDS!

Me: I know. Listen, Remus, I appreciate it and everything, but...

Moody: AND YOU SHOULDN'T TRUST THE RAT, EITHER! HE WILL SNEAK UP YOUR RECTUM IN HIS ANIMAGUS FORM AND USE YOU TO SMUGGLE HIM OUT OF THE PRISON!

Remus: Harry, someone had to try to get through to you.

Moody: TREACHERY! CUNNING! DECEIT! LIES!

Tonks: Look, we can see why you feel you need to talk to him...

Me: You can???

Tonks: Er... no, not really.

Moody: DOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

When they'd finally gone I needed several Butterbeers to cure my poor, sore head, especially as Fred and George had decided to play naked Twister. Fortunately Molly caught them and stopped them just as they were getting to the sock stage.

Under the cover of all the shouting, Arthur leaned forwards and said quietly, "Harry, I was asking around at work about the problems you've had lately. You know what I mean."

"Er, yes," I said cautiously.

"I seem to have hit a dead end, I'm afraid," he said. "Nobody seems to know what's going on in there. Almost every document I tried said that nobody in the Ministry had clearance..."

"That's what Dumbledore said," I said gloomily.

"And the other documents said that only Dumbledore had clearance."

That made me laugh.

"So I don't know what's happening. I've hit a brick wall."

"It's OK," I said glumly. "He did say nobody seemed to know what was going on."

"Yes, but if even the Minister doesn't," said Arthur, "then that does make me wonder who's in charge."

"Yeah, he said..." I paused. "Scrimgeour himself doesn't know?"

"No, he doesn't. I asked him. He disclaimed all knowledge, of course... I get the impression, Harry, that he's too scared to go into Azkaban."

"_Scared?_" I sneered incredulously. "There's _nothing there_. There must be at least a dozen guards working there. Just ordinary people. If _they _can do it – "

"Yes, well," he said dryly, "I don't think it's them that the inmates want to kill."

"No, it's _me_," I said grumpily, "so if I can go in there, surely he can."

After a pause he said in a wondering tone, "I think it's marvellous, what you're doing. Really, you're so young, yet you want to visit your enemies and talk to them. If only certain people six or seven times your age would do that..."

I realised, to my horror, that Arthur _admired _me. The guilt of cheating on his daughter with Voldemort became overwhelming. "Erm," I mumbled, casting around desperately for a discreet means of committing suicide.

"I don't suppose you'd help me with the Muggle Rights Bill?" he said hopefully.

I launched a sustained effort to woo and pamper Ginny. Oddly, this seemed to embarrass her; when I brought her drinks and rubbed her shoulders she just giggled and looked nervous. I wasn't sure what was going on there.

-

On the 27th I went to visit Voldie, taking his present and _Villette_ and a Santa hat. The sight of _Villette _educed his only genuine smile that day.

"Did you like it?" he said, petting the cover.

"Well, sort of," I said, "but I could only understand about one word in ten."

"Ignoramus."

"And I brought you a Santa hat."

"Hank you," he said calmly, putting it on. Voldemort, 1; torturers, 0. Meanwhile I'd been practising conjuration, and could now conjure a reasonable truffle, so I did. He ate them and gave them eight out of ten, and gave me a few wand-movement tips. I changed the subject hurriedly before he started writing equations again: "What book d'you want next week?"

He thought it over. "Ought to be about gay lohe, oughtn't it? Always hated _Maurice_... _Charioteer? _No, gihes 'he wrong imprehion. Better be _'He Price Of Salt_. Patricia Highsmith, or whateher she was calling herselh back 'hen... Claire Morgan, I 'hink."

It took a moment for me to confirm this: he really had said "gay love". All my skin prickled painfully; I changed the subject again.

I told him about my Christmas, with the obvious exception of the visit from Moody and co, and he nodded obediently and tried to be interested. I faithfully related the sex argument at the dinner table, including the bit about oral and anal being the same thing, and added, "I still don't really see how there's supposed to be a difference."

"Anal hurtsss more," he said.

"Consensually."

"I wouldn't know."

"Oh, shut up. You're still trying to tug my heartstrings. Listen, I love you and everything, but you're not getting out of here, you know."

"I know," he said dully.

"What's the worst thing you've done?" I asked abruptly.

His eyes narrowed. "Worst hing? I don't know. How would I know? 'Hey keep telling me I don't understand it."

"Understand what?"

"Anyhing. People. Don't care about people," he said with brick-like indifference. I was about to say something like, That's the greatest understatement of all time, when I noticed the brick was creeping nervously away from me. "Not going to punish me?" he said. "Please don't punish me."

Suddenly he could have been anyone. You get them far down enough, they all break just the same; they're all pink on the inside and they all taste like chicken. It hurt a great deal because I didn't want him to be like everyone else; there were odd kernels in his personality that I liked, and besides, if even Lord Voldemort could be flattened out like this, there was no hope for any of us. I very much wanted him to be different somehow, and remembered with a rather weird light in my heart that parts of his anatomy were snaky; perhaps if we cut him open we would find little venom sacs.

I rubbed his shoulder absently and he shrank even farther away. It all seemed hopeless. I remembered at his place, when my back had been pounded to a pulp until at last it was completely numb, like steak bashed with a meat hammer; unable to respond to pain or touch alike. I wondered dully if there would ever be any point in being nice to him, or anyone for that matter. Maybe we were lumps of gristle on an especially sadistic butcher's slab (I would go vegetarian tomorrow, I decided), up to and including megalomaniac genii. Perhaps it was wrong, but I felt it was precisely because he was a megalomaniac that he should be saved.

(Later in life I was to discover that the person you're working with always seems to be the most important of all, the sole being who should be saved, but Voldemort was my first ever and I didn't know that then.)

Life had no positive aspects, or at any rate they were indistinguishable from the negative ones. I wondered idly if I should end it all but to be honest there didn't seem much point. If you chop the lumps of gristle to bits they don't exactly notice.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I told him. "I don't want you to be afraid of me."

He recovered slightly, as did the rags of his dignity. He did the snaky-man equivalent of fluffing up his feathers and hissed, "It's a bit late for that, my child."

Were we both speaking Parseltongue? I hadn't noticed. Relief: there was one way, after all, in which he was still unique; even with no teeth, and nobody could deny it.

"I love you," I said absently, then in a rush of unaccustomed mental activity, "Do you know, I think perhaps what they're trying to prove, the torturers, is that we're, obviously, all the same. That's what I was just thinking, that we're all like, just, flesh. But they seem to think – I don't know why – that we're, that our minds are different from theirs somehow, and it's like they're going, There, look, take a look at _that_, Harry Potter, you're just the same as anyone else, you're all just scum. But we're _not_," I said, waving my hands about in a frenzy and quietly weeping, "we're all _different_."

Ha. Hee. "'Yes, we're all different!'," I gurned, and waited for Voldie to say "Er, I'm not"; but he didn't. Perhaps, in retrospect, that was just because he wasn't a particular Monty Python fan; but in addition to that, he didn't dare say funny things any more.

Torture might not have pounded him into an undifferentiated chunk of meat yet, but it probably would if nobody intervened.

"What's in 'hat parcel?" he said mildly just as I was reaching a suicidal nadir, and I looked up to see him staring at his wrapped-up present with open, devouring curiosity.

With a bit of an effort, I managed to pull myself together. "Maybe you shouldn't open it yet," I teased. "Maybe it's your birthday present."

He seemed satisfied with that, rather to my disappointment, but then added with brutal matter-of-factness, "You'd better let me open it now ih you want me to hind out what it is, 'hough, because 'he torhurers'll probably destroy it."

Cheers, Voldie. I went and got his present and solemnly handed it over, and he unwrapped it with great interest. When he uncovered the owl he sat and contemplated it in silence.

"It looks like my owl, Hedwig," I said.

He revived slightly. "Hedwig? As in Hedwig the Horrible, hirst Protector of Hogwarts?"

"Er, yeah, I think."

"She had a brother called Karsten," he said absently, cuddling the owl.

"I hope you like it," I said inanely.

"_Him_," said Voldie.

I tried not to laugh, or cry.

_Week 35_

Start of term. Dormitory. Ron. Relief. I jumped on his back and scragged him with a cry of "Heyaaaah!", eliciting howls and yelps. I hadn't realised I'd missed him so much. Then we calmed down, relatively speaking, and thanked each other for our Christmas presents and sprawled across his bed sharing all the chocolates we'd accumulated over the holidays.

"Did it... er... go OK?" I said tentatively.

"Yeah," he said brusquely, and that was about it. I decided not to ask any more.

After a pause he said, "I really missed you, though."

"I really missed you and all," I confessed. "And... er... I broke up with Ginny."

"I know," he said with no apparent interest. "She owled me and asked if it was my fault."

"What?!"

"If I shagged you."

"Urrrgh!" I yelled, and he guffawed and whacked me with a pillow. Perhaps he thought it was a joke, but to be honest I was quite sincere; he was my best friend, for Christ's sake! I'd _never _thought about shagging him! And I, er, didn't even know how. My mood sank once again.

"Ron, I'm not gay."

His eyes became the size of cauliflowers. "You're _not _gay?!"

"I did it with a bloke. I'm just... not gay."

Gruesome flashback time. Over New Year the Weasley clan and its satellites had decamped en masse to Scotland, where there was snow. We went sledging, threw snowballs at Bill and got pissed, and somewhere in the middle of this was an awful blue moment when we should have been having fun.

It was sunny. It was crisp and bright. Fred and George had created an anatomically correct snowman and charmed it to make overtures to Bill; in the end he got fed up of this and brained George with an extra-large icicle. This started an all-out war between the twins, Charlie and Bill, and the four of them ran about a mile and a half before Ginny and I had even realised what was going on. We leant against each other and sniggered helplessly.

Then we sat down on a snow-covered haybale and I absently put my arms round her and rocked back and forth as I wondered how to protect her from the 987,656 evils of the world. I stared at the sky and thought that I'd tried so hard to do something for Voldie and I'd failed, and not only that but I'd cheated on Ginny in the process; and doing good things was so difficult, because even solving the problem (defeating Voldemort) just leads to more problems (lunatics torturing Voldemort) and you've made yourself obsolete in the process.

Ginny said, "Harry, if you're going to say something, just say it."

"I wasn't," I said blankly.

"No, I mean, for all of this week. In general."

"Oh. Do you want – you know, everything, the truth, and – "

"No."

"Oh..."

"I don't need to know the details."

"What? – no, I mean, I thought about it for a long time, and I thought, I could just tell her I'm gay, and that would end the relationship without it being either of our faults. But..."

"But...?"

"I'm not gay. I still fancy girls."

"And boys."

"Er, I suppose so. But... All I can say is I didn't mean to cheat on you and... I'm just an idiot, I suppose."

Pause. "Well, if you still fancy me, why are you dumping me?"

I was silent, startled, and she concluded, "Because you like him more."

Like Voldemort more than Ginny? Preposterous. I couldn't tell her the truth, though, in case she guessed who it was I'd had it off with; so I lied and said yes.

So here I was back at Hogwarts with Ron, and by the time I finished telling him everything I thought he needed to know (which, in all truth, wasn't much) he had grabbed a Chocolate Frog wrapper in both hands and was slowly crinkling it into nothingness, jabbing it with his fingernails. This looked bad.

I said, "I haven't heard from Hermione yet."

"No," he mumbled, his face vanishing into his sweater.

Ha.

-

The next day we were hurrying to DADA; rather late, since everyone had been kept back in Potions until all the pomegranate juice was scraped off the walls. I was leading the pack, and was just starting down the stairs. Snape appeared at the bottom, glared up at me, and opened his gob to begin a this-is-all-your-self-important-fault-Potter rant.

It came on me very suddenly: a gush of sickening vertigo that left me blinking and uncertain; Hermione's stare as she wondered what was happening; and then a boiling cauldron into which I was flung as ceremoniously as the scrunt end of a stick of celery.

"Oh, this won't do, you know this won't do," said a soft, smug voice; and the whole room was in flames. The ceiling, the walls; and a dark figure hunched over me.

The pain in my arms, legs; everywhere. "Don't – I don't – stop – "

"It's much too late for that now."

Then fire.

I was quite disconcerted when I woke up in the hospital wing, because in the past it had always been a blessed haven from whatever Bludger or Dark Lord was persecuting me, whereas on this occasion Snape was lying unconscious in the next bed. I wondered whether I could sneak off to the other end of the ward without anyone noticing. Then I wondered what he was doing in here anyway. In the end I gathered up all my clothes and Chocolate Frogs and was just tiptoeing off to a different bed when Madam Pomfrey crept out of her office.

"Ah, Harry," she whispered. "Feeling better, dear? I was just going to suggest you go back to your dormitory before Severus wakes up. Let me just check your vital signs."

"Good idea," I muttered fervently, and she cast a billion vital-sign-checking spells with her wand and let me escape to Gryffindor Tower, where a legion of gleeful Gryffindors jumped on me and let me know that the reason Snape was unconscious was because when I'd fainted down the stairs I had landed on top of him.

"Your heads made this noise like _klunk_," Dean chortled, liberating a few of my Chocolate Frogs.

"It wasn't funny, Dean," Hermione said very severely. "It was awful for Harry, and he was lucky he wasn't killed."

"He was lucky Snape didn't kill him, you mean," cackled Seamus.

Neville was gazing at me open-mouthed in a sort of hero-worshipping way. Clearly he was a lot more impressed by this than he'd been when I defeated Voldie.

"Well, if you do have to go through terrible things, it's got to be a silver lining if you knock Snape out while you're doing it," reasoned Ginny, which oddly enough were my thoughts on the issue precisely. I congratulated her on her good sense and went off to the boys' toilets to vomit.

-

Off to see Dumbledore. I stared at the gargoyle as it rumbled out of the way, wondering what, if anything, I would achieve this time.

"Ah, Harry," he said calmly, quite unsurprised. "I was hoping I would get to talk to you before I have to explain to poor Professor Snape. You are feeling better, I trust?"

"Yes, I am, Professor, although you know I don't care," I said wearily.

"Come now, Harry..."

"Well, I don't. I mean, sorry. But how can you expect me to worry about concussion or whatever when I just woke up from... that?"

"Your welfare is my responsibility, if you recall, Harry," he said gently, "whereas Mr Riddle's is not."

I said, "'Every man is a part of the continent, a piece of the main'?"

"Pardon?"

"I don't... really know. What did you want to talk to me about? Sorry, Professor."

He looked at me, sighed and said "Harry, I don't really mind what you say as long as you are safe and sound. Alas, you are not, and neither is Professor Snape, who doubtless will have as many things to say on the subject as Thogbert the Scaly did when he discovered that Rowena Ravenclaw had given him a Potion of Flatulence.

"Let me ask you a question. These images you have received from Voldemort; the experiences you see him enduring. Do you think they might be said, in the objective sense, to be real?"

I opened my mouth to say something, I don't know what, and came up smack against that word "real". I thought of the cacophony of sensations I'd experienced, the sight and the sound and the touch and the _smell_ and Voldie's thoughts, and Voldie's emotions, and Voldie's memories, and how it had all blurred into one sour note of fear and disgust. Then I found I was sitting in Dumbledore's office with my mouth still open, so I cleared my throat and said "I don't see how it could possibly not be real, sir."

"Although he has sent you false images in the past?" Dumbledore said calmly. "Images that you believed to be real at the time?"

Sirius sprawled on the floor of the Department of Mysteries, the scene as clear and straightforward as a reel of CCTV, and no smell. I wondered detachedly whether I should have noticed that at the time, and so prevented his death. How stupid. What a mess life was. "It wasn't anything like the same thing, sir."

"You think so," he said; half a question. The lack of inflection was ominous. I didn't think it was necessary to answer.

"What if I told you," he said, "that I have been checking on this issue at Azkaban myself, and that Mr Riddle has not been tortured at any point in the last three weeks?"

The steps crumbled away before and behind. Nasty.

"Then they're lying to you, sir."

"I was there myself," he said quietly.

I felt my gorge rising. "That vision – that image – it didn't come from nowhere. There's no way it could have done. If it didn't happen _at the time _I fell over, then it must have happened at some other time..."

"Over three weeks ago?" he said.

"They weren't _supposed _to be torturing him three weeks ago. They're not supposed to be torturing him _at all_. This is..." I choked on what I was trying to say and panted like a Rottweiler.

"The point is, Harry," he said firmly, "I believe that they are _not _torturing him at all. Lord Voldemort, as he has done so many times before, is trying to manipulate your mind. He has created these images from his own experiences of being tortured during the summer, and of torturing others, including you, before that – "

"NO! NO!"

"Harry – "

"IT ISN'T LIKE THAT! He can, he can control his mind," I said desperately. "I mean, he's always very controlled. The only way he would be thinking anything like _this _is if they were torturing him."

Dumbledore sat there blinking, and I realised this didn't make a great deal of sense. "And the cell was on fire," I rattled off frantically, "and I've seen it on fire before. I was there."

"And was he being tortured?"

No. "There's this figure, there's always this figure," I said angrily. "A black figure that wears a mask. That's the one who does the torturing! I remember knowing about, seeing it, when I'd just woken up. Before he knew I was awake. Look, _sir! _This is..."

I couldn't really go on; both because I hadn't had time to really formulate an argument, and because Dumbledore was looking at me with an alarmed, appeasing expression that suggested he thought I was two Champions short of a Triwizard Tournament.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "Perhaps I need a bit more time to rest..."

"Oh, goodness," he exclaimed. "Please forgive me, Harry, for keeping you on your feet all this time. Do you need a Dreamless Sleep potion from Madam Pomfrey? Or..."

"No, no, I'll just get to bed..."

Fawkes squawked at me pityingly and Dumbledore opened the door for me, so I really must have looked a mess. I wasn't tired, though; as I stumbled off the Gryffindor Tower I was practically hyperventilating.

_Dumbledorethinksthewholething'saconDumbledorethinksthewholething'saconDumbledorethinksthewholething'sacon..._

All right, I told myself. Just... forget it. Stay calm. Try to forget the whole thing for a few days and tackle it when you can think about it without shrieking.

-

Gryffindor dorm. Lying in bed in a tense, unhappy knot of bad brain-things. Neville snored loudly, which meant he was happy; mostly happy about being back at Hogwarts and away from his gran, I suspected.

Then I was on my hands and knees. Not my knees; my stumps. My body was a bridge, an agonised spar of taut muscle.

"Oh, come now," a voice said smoothly. "You're not even _trying!_"

Then there was more of the pain and less of me. Foamy spit dripped out of my mouth and landed on the stones below me. There was a circle of spit, and a pear-shape. I stared at them with an intensity I felt I had never applied to anything before. There were so many things I'd left undone. I'd never thought about any of it before, never bothered to do it, and now it was too late.

And pretty Harry. The beautiful boy. What would he say if he knew?

Then the voice spoke again, horribly smooth and disgusting like, like what, goddammit? Oh yes, North Pole Pudding. A grey, gluey mixture that they gave us for afters at the orphanage because we didn't rate anything better. The comparison amused me for a moment, but then he started saying the same old things, didn't he think I'd heard them before, those limp stereotypes and superior attitude, like vile flesh growing around me, and I –

– started awake because Neville, bless him, had snorted loudly in his sleep. I wished I'd bought him a Christmas present.

Nobody was awake; I supposed I couldn't have screamed or thrashed too much. I lay there for a few minutes, a big unhappy lump in my stomach because I didn't know what had happened to Voldie. Probably I was better off not knowing, but that just made it all worse.

How was I supposed to tell Dumbledore it had happened again within a few hours? He'd think I was fabricating it to make a point.

In the end I couldn't stand it. I needed company. Could I crawl in bed with Ron? Nah, he'd think I was a fairy – hang on.

I sneaked in next to him and set my back against his. His breathing stopped temporarily and he mumbled in a puzzled voice, "Who's that?"

"It's me, dickhead."

"All right, Harry."

"Yeah."

He rearranged the bedcovers amid a lot of huffing and puffing, turned over to face me and gasped blearily, "Having nightmares again?"

"Yeah," I said, trying not to quail as I got a faceful of morning breath.

He put an arm around me and dictated, "Stay in bed with me."

"Thanks."

After a while I said "Ron, do you believe in forgiveness?"

Aggrieved. "Yes!"

"You – "

"I do forgive him!"

"I meant – oh."

"I forgive him," he announced, giving me an inkling of what I sounded like when I was off on one of _my _perorations. "You-Know-Who was threatening to kill his mother if he didn't do as he said, and he was out of his depth, really. How can you judge someone on the _worst _thing they ever did, like, 'You once panicked and nearly killed someone, so you're evil and I'm not'? He was never a murderer. He was a silly kid who got in over his head."

"Nice speech," I said, impressed.

"You think so?" he said, sounding relieved. "I'm worried they'll all laugh at me."

"No, it was dead good."

"You forgive him, don't you?" he said, sounding slightly anxious and sheepish. "I mean... I can only forgive him myself. I can't very well say 'Oh yeah, and don't worry about nearly killed Katie and breaking Harry's nose, cos I've decided to forgive you on their behalf.'"

I quite understood. "I do. As long as he's not being a prat any more..."

"He's not. Promise. He can't afford to, now."

I thought about it for a bit and then said, "When you said you forgive him – that's _not _just because you fancy him."

"Ha!"

"What?"

"Can you imagine? What with Dad? 'Oh, I hope you don't mind, I'm going to shag a – '"

"Mm," I said, thinking how odd it was that Ron was the only person who appeared to have the same general views as I did. I'd thought forgiving Dark wizards was my prerogative alone; that if I ever communicated my wimpy, Quakerish views to Ron he would shout "Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater" and hit me over the head with his club. Totally wrong; I'd forgotten that Draco had almost killed him, and that he had some forgiving to do himself; that his gay affair might be as intense and deep and meaningful as mine. I hoped this was all just because I was a big-headed prick, because the alternative explanation was that I didn't know him very well any more.

"I took Voldemort a Christmas present," I said.

"_In Azkaban?_"

"Well, he's not exactly allowed out."

Ron put a long, muscly arm round me, patted my shoulder a few times and said, "You get some sleep, mate. I'll look after you."

Top lad, that Ron.


	6. The Getting Of Wisdom

**Chapter 6: The Getting Of Wisdom**

_Week 36_

The Daily Prophet suddenly announced on the front cover that I was visiting Azkaban, which I'd been doing for the preceding 20 weeks. Accordingly, that Sunday I was followed practically to the prison gates by the male equivalents of Rita Skeeter, who kept shouting, "What's in the bag?", "Who are you visiting?" and "Are you here on official business?"

"Of course I'm not on official business, I'm just taking the prisoners books," I shouted back irritably, and waved _Crime and Punishment _at them to prove it. The photographer started snapping away frantically and a reporter shouted "Has it got drugs inside?"

"No, it has not got drugs inside, I'm taking them something to read!" I snapped. "Voldemort likes literary fiction and Wormtail likes true crime!" and at that point a reporter jammed his Quick-Quotes Quill practically up my nose and shouted hopefully, "Are you here to torture You-Know-Who?"

Rage. "NO, I AM NOT HERE TO TORTURE YOU-KNOW-WHO!" I shouted. "I HAVE NEVER TORTURED ANYONE AND NEVER WILL! I'M BRINGING HIM BOOKS, _BOOKS_, BECAUSE HE'S GOING TO SPEND THE REST OF HIS LIFE IN PRISON AND HE LIKES TO READ!" And I stamped into Azkaban.

Well. That had been quite a build-up. By the time I walked through the flames I felt like Atlas.

Karsten stared at me inscrutably; Voldemort looked up sharply, and we gazed uncertainly at each other for a moment or two.

He quirked a coquettish eyebrow and said, "Do I get a cuddle?"

Shuddering somewhat at this incongruity, I climbed in next to him and started taking my clothes off, but he swatted me and said I had a dirty mind. This was just as well, since it was really cold. We snuggled up and started to talk, but I didn't know where to start.

"Lot of torturing going on," I hinted.

"Yesss."

"Did you get healed?"

"As you see."

"Yeah, I thought you seemed..." I said absently, then floundered around and finally finished with, "normal."

"Normal," he repeated, and cackled horribly.

"Er... me and Ginny broke up."

"Told you you should have got her a Prittie Kittie."

He was clearly in a flippant mood. Lucky him.

"And I fell down the stairs and twatted Snape in the head."

He gave a great snort, wiped his nose on his sleeve and said "I knew 'hat already, but look what you _ssstill _made me do."

"You knew?!"

"Hey told me while hey were torhuring me."

I wondered how to find out if the images he was sending me were real, without letting him know that Dumbledore had put me up to it. Of course, he could read my mind anyway. He might be laughing at me right now, thinking, What a gullible dolt.

"What did they give you for dessert in the orphanage?" I asked.

His expression was a thing of beauty. "_What?_"

"When you were a kid."

Stare. "Rock cakes ih we were really lucky and Norh Pole Pudding ih we weren't, wih a whole rainbow oh unappetising hingsss in between. Am I allowed to ask why?"

So at least he and I had had the same vision, whether it was true or not. "No," I said, satisfied. "Here – listen. How come I'm sometimes there when you're being tortured, and sometimes not?"

He wriggled uncomfortably and muttered, "Occlumency ssslips."

"Whose does?"

"_Mine_."

"Because of the pain, you can't keep control of your Occlumency, so you can't keep me out of your head..."

"Yep."

"Why some times and not others?"

Glare. "Doesss _your _Occlumency always work consissstently?"

"No, but that's not right. I'm rubbish at it. You're the best in the world."

"Being 'he best doesn't mean I'm omnipotent."

That sounded reasonable. I didn't know what to say to it.

"He's not trying to break 'hrough any more," he said after a moment. "Early on, he did. But now he knows 'hat he can't penetrate my Occlumency wihout your being inholhed."

I unsuccessfully tried to screen out the word "penetrate" and said, "Why does he _want _to break through, what's he trying to find out about?"

"Nohing," said Voldie. "He wants to _torhure _me."

"I have dreams about you sometimes. Just ordinary dreams. But... I mean... they turn out to be true."

"Ahhhhh," he said very thoughtfully, pulling me a bit closer and gently tickling my nose. "Dreams – hery unpredictable. Neher follow 'he normal rules oh Legilimency. More like dihination..."

The nose-tickling in combination with "penetration" was too much. I lost track of the conversation for a while. We were warming up nicely under the covers; I began to wonder whether hanky-panky might be an option after all.

"And I said quotes at Dumbledore," I said absently.

"You said what?!"

"He said your welfare was not his responsibility, and I quoted at him! You know, from a poem! Thing! The one that goes 'No man is an island, every man is a piece of the continent, a...'"

"Oh god, Potter," he howled, "you hucking quoted Donne at him?! Hat's brilliant! Own medicine! Ha ha!"

"What?" I said, confused. "It's a brilliant poem. I think."

"Oh," he said. "You were ssserious? Hm."

"_I _like it!"

"Oh, Potter, your taste in literature is hust _awhul! _Hat's such a clihéd, banal passsahe, andyou got it _wrong!"_

"Well, how does it fucking go, then?! And I _still _like it!"

Without pausing for breath, he recited, "No man is an _Iland_ intire oh it ssselhe, ehery man is a piece of 'he _Continent_, a part of 'he _maine_, ih a _Clod_ bee washed away by 'he _Sssea_ _Europe_ is 'he lesse, as well as ih a _Promontorie_ were, as well as ih a _Manor_ of 'hy _hriends_ or oh _'hine owne_ were, any mans _deah_ diminishes _me_, because I am inholhed in _Mankinde_, And 'herefore neher sssend to know hor whom 'he _bell_ tolls, it tolls hor _'hee_."

"I did not get it wrong!"

"You missed out 'intire oh it selhe'."

"Oh, well. Say it again."

He rattled it off again, and added the speechy bit out of _An Inspector Calls _for good measure. I was enthralled and deeply impressed.

"Potter, you've got 'he literary sensssibilities oh a sausage."

"Fine. What do I bring you next week? Fortnight, even."

"'_He Getting Of Wisdom. _Henry Handel Richardson. Do you know how old I am, Potter?"

I did. "You're 70. Many happy returns."

"Hank you. And do you know how old I was behore 'hat?"

Eh? "Er... 69?"

"Why, how nice oh you to ohher," he said sweetly, lifting the covers. I walked right into that one. Never mind.

---

On the way back to Hogwarts I discovered that I hadn't asked him or told him anything about the Dumbledore-says-the-visions-aren't-real scenario. All I'd asked him about was North Pole Pudding. Very deep.

While I was floundering back through the grounds, all sounds muffled by snow, I made the further discovery that I believed Voldemort, and that Dumbledore must be mistaken. I didn't know how or when I had come to that conclusion; I didn't know what others would think of it. I only knew that it was as solid as any belief I had ever held.

_Week 37_

The following week I was on the front cover of the _Prophet _and the headline announced, rather surprisingly, that I was doing humanitarian work at Azkaban. At first I was deeply flattered, and wondered why on earth they had made such a positive interpretation when they could have stuck with the drugs thing; when I read the feature a bit more carefully, though, I found the tone was suspiciously neutral. With some astonishment, I realised that I was now the witzyworld equivalent of a Communist; being a philanthropist was one thing, it appeared, but smuggling in books made me a dangerous lunatic.

("Do you want me to smuggle you some drugs?" I had asked Voldemort out of curiosity.

"NO," he'd grunted unexpectedly loudly, and amended, "Sorry. No. Would make hallucinahions worse.")

Then there was a picture of me with Arthur, Remus and Tonks: all of them beaming and waving, and poor old me lying in my hospital bed with a slightly glazed expression. It was captioned, "Mr Potter with Remus Lupin, his werewolf friend, and Angus Weasley, who is masterminding the Muggle Rights Bill." I caught the subtext.

This, of course, was – how can I put this? – the last drop of grease that broke Snape's skull. While Hermione was giving me a political digest of the _Prophet _feature I could feel him irradiating me with his demented gaze, and I was pretty sure it wasn't because he thought I was shagging Ron. Horrible revenge for the headbanging was imminent.

I catalogued the means by which he might achieve it.

- Hexing me off my broom at a Quidditch match: not possible. Every cloud etc.

- Giving me a T on my DADA NEWT: he's not the invigilator, so nyah.

- Taking a million points from Gryffindor for an imagined slight: well, we're all used to that by now.

- Poisoning me: a distinct possibility. Hermione started researching antidotes.

- Hiring Crabbe and Goyle to beat me up: ditto. I resolved not to go anywhere alone until Snape looked less apoplectic.

Subtlety was never my middle name (in fact, if it had been, Snape might never have hated me in the first place, since the second two-thirds of my name wouldn't have been "James Potter"); I omitted the simplest method.

"Today," he whinged at the DADA class, "we are studying affliction. Suffering. _Pain_. The subtle and delicate art of causing sufficient discomfort to your enemy to disrupt and distract him, _without _falling foul of the law; or, in some cases, of your tender yet infinitely flexible consciences." (Time it had taken Snape to start carping about me: 29 secs.) "I believe you have already studied the Stinging Hex and the... silence, Miss Granger, you are not my personal secretary, blah blah blah." Then he prowled around the classroom disparaging our notes from last year. Mine turned out to be covered in an enormous amount of what looked like ketchup, and he raised an eyebrow and emitted much sniggering before moving on to Ron's.

Obviously, when someone "teaches" a subject to you for several hours a week, you spend a lot of time staring up their nostrils and thinking about how ugly they are; but today's was a particularly intense session. Snape's curtains of hair were horribly black and slick, like Lego-woman hair. On either side of his pasty face like that, they looked like an arch of black stone. I thought of Sirius falling through the veil, and knew this was going to be bad. Apparently it also made me gape vacantly at Snape like a cod, because he snapped "Potter, as you find me so fascinating today, you may help me demonstrate. Stand up and come to the front of the room."

Great. I got up cautiously and stood opposite him, trying to ignore the gawkers. Draco Malfoy's expression was particularly interesting; he was crumpling up his face as if he had severe indigestion.

"We are going to demonstrate," he said, "the Shocking Curse. This delivers a sharp, stinging pain to the your victim's entire body. Those of you who are too feeble to tolerate such appalling torture may omit this spell if you wish. You will merely receive a T for today's lesson. Others with particularly thick skulls will barely notice it.

"The wand movement is a sharp twist of the wrist, and the incantation is... _Vexatio!_"

The shock jarred my teeth somewhat and made my hair stand on end, but apart from that it only made me angry. So he wanted to play dirty, did he? Fine. I could do that, too. I gripped my wand in anticipation.

"As you see," he said smoothly, "for those of us who are not hand-wringing moral incompetents, the effects of this spell are really rather trivial. A little pain will not do your arch-enemy any harm – and it really is amusing to watch certain people who should know better scream and flap their hands about."

Perambulating slowly around the Gryffindors' desks, punctuating his oration with careless flicks of one hand, he continued, "You may hear it said that for proper efficacy, the caster of a pain-inflicting spell must enjoy inflicting pain. This is a total myth. The Shocking Curse can be cast by any wizard with an average grasp of magical theory. The world is not a hive of ravening sadists who gain pleasure from torture, whatever conspiracy theorists may think, and as for those sadists who _do _exist... well, a little torture here or there won't make any great difference.

"_So, _Potter," he concluded, finally coming to a stop opposite me, "let's see if you do live up to your reputation. Are you ready?"

At this point we reached our possibly rather premature standoff. In a film I would have said "Yes!" and he would have spouted a bit more guff before the bust-up. In practice, however, I felt straight away that to say "Yes" would imply I was OK with either inflicting pain on him or having him do it to me, which I wasn't; and to say "No" would imply that I wasn't ready _yet_, but eventually would be. Of course, I could have screamed "Fuck off" or something, but that would have got me into quite a lot more trouble than seemed really necessary; and besides, when it came down to it, I felt so disgusted with it, and him, and the whole pathetic charade, that I just stuffed my wand in my pocket, picked up my bag and walked out. This caused a lot more of a sensation than I'd have predicted, because people were kind of shrinking away from me in awe. I hate it when they do that.

So anyway, this left me stamping through the corridors of Hogwarts, fuming, feeing rather silly, and wondering what I was supposed to do now. Eventually I decided that unless I wanted to be caught and railed at by McGonagall, it would be a good idea to go and hide somewhere until the end of the day; and since the snow was coming down in quilts, I went and lounged happily in the Trophy Room reading _The Getting Of Wisdom_, which contained some fairly pertinent subject matter.

After a quarter of an hour, much to my surprise, I heard loud whining drawing closer, which meant that Draco and Ron were coming to visit me. I was even more surprised when the doors opened to reveal Hermione and Neville as well. I grinned in a silly way. Billy No-Mates, eh? Not a chance.

"Took us a while to find you, mate," said Ron, putting the Map away.

"...he does, he's done it ever since first year," Hermione continued irritably.

"Yes, well, it was different then, wasn't it?" chuntered Draco. "Now he's got his reputation to worry about."

"You all right, Neville?" I said curiously. His face was pale green; walking out of one of Snape's lessons, it appeared, was the most frightening thing he had ever done. I remembered how brave (albeit totally incompetent) he'd been at the Dept of Mysteries, and found the contrast a bit sad; how could anyone be more afraid of their childhood teacher than they were of the Cruciatus curse? But anyway, "Yes," he said stoutly, although he had to sit down on a small display case.

"You'll be in terrible trouble, Harry," worried Hermione. "You hexed McLaggen before, then Draco, and now you're walking out of lessons..."

"You did that back in third y..."

"Yes, yes, I know. But Harry, you keep breaking more and more rules. Aren't you _afraid _of Snape any more?"

Good question. I thought it over. "No," I admitted, while in the background, Ron and Draco stopped arguing and started cooing. "I'm not afraid of anything any more. That all went away when I stopped being afraid of Voldemort." Hermione wouldn't like that. "Sorry."

"You've got to pull yourself together, Harry," she said severely. "I mean, I think you were quite justified in what you did just now, but if you don't remember to behave yourself, you'll do something stupid. You _want _to get your NEWTs, don't you?"

To tell the truth, they didn't seem to mean anything at all. "I suppose."

Hermione knows me far too well. "And," she continued shrewdly, "you want to carry on visiting Voldemort, don't you?"

"_What?_" I said, alarmed, while in the background Neville almost died at the sound of the name.

"Well, the school gave you permission to visit Azkaban, so, if you don't behave..."

I think it says something that I almost seriously considered apologising to Snape.

Later we all got in trouble with our respective Heads of House, although I somehow doubted that Snape would penalise Draco much, and tried to look suitably penitent. Luna informed me I shouldn't worry about Snape too much anyway because it was well known he belonged to the Order of Gadzooks, whose members practised strange sexual perversions and rode around naked at the full moon on camels, but I didn't really find that very comforting.

Ginny was more impressed. "Well done, Harry, you were quite right," she said staunchly. "Snape was being a real prick, from what Ron and Hermione said."

We smiled at each other tentatively; I still wasn't really sure if she'd forgiven me for running off with a man, and in retrospect I think she wasn't sure I'd forgiven her for getting pregnant, either.

"I walked out too," Neville informed her, puffing out his chest and growing about a foot.

"He did," gushed Hermione, after making sure that Ron could hear. "That was so brave, when hardly anybody else did. You should be proud of yourself, Neville."

This did _not _have the effect she intended: "What about Draco?" Ron said, mildly aggrieved. "He got in trouble with Snape and he doesn't even _like _Harry" – thanks, Ron. Hermione cast a scornful glance over her shoulder and marched off, dragging Neville and Ginny with her. She'd taken a great dislike to me since I had succumbed to the rainbow spirochaetes.

---

I don't know if I ever explained why it was that I stopped being afraid; afraid of Voldemort and the DEs and pain and, well, pretty much everything. Basically I had an epiphany. I don't really know what it was. I'm not a Christian, so I shouldn't think it was a religious experience, and I've never tried to find out if it means something magical. Perhaps it came from shock or blood loss or lack of oxygen to the brain. Then again, perhaps it was the healing glow of pure logic. God knows I don't experience that very often.

Basically it was when I was at Voldie's place, obviously, and I was halfway through getting tortured by the DEs. (Voldie hadn't shown up yet at that point.) Prior to that point, I remember the torture entirely in terms of my battle to prove that I Was Superior to the Death Eaters. They might have captured me, they might have tied me up and mocked me and tortured me and told me that they'd done all sorts of horrible things to my friends (and I believed them at first, since I had no way of knowing that all the others were in fact safe, but then it began to get a bit repetitive), but I WAS STILL BETTER THAN THEM. Why? Because I was Good and they were Bad and my Jokes were Funny and theirs Weren't, and they were Cowards whereas I was Brave. Basically I was trying to beat down the feelings of rage, bitterness and mortification caused by the fact that I was not as badass as I'd thought I was. I'd been beaten by the Death Eaters! They were making me their bitch, and they were rubbing my face in it, what's more! I had to retaliate, dammit!

It seems odd I don't remember the pain. You'd think that would seem more important. It didn't at all.

I was thinking about acrid, painful things, like Alice and Frank on the closed ward and Snape sneering at Hermione, and I began to realise that the thing that was reallyhurting me was that I was trying to cling to two diametrically opposed philosophies; that I believed both that weak people were pathetic and laughable and deserved to suffer, and that torture and cruelty were wrong and their victims were blameless. I'd been believing that it was all right for some people to be helpless victims, like the Longbottoms who, I'd thought with unconscious disparagement, had never exactly been guerrillas in the first place; but not me. Never me. I had to be tough and fierce and kick-ass. My self-respect depended on it.

The epiphany came, not in a blinding flash, but slow as a sunrise; as though I were toiling slowly up a hill and the light gradually became visible over the summit. I'd been shivering and sweating from the pain, and to my surprise, a glow spread through my body as if my central heating had been switched on. I suddenly understood, I realised that being a helpless victim was nothing to be ashamed of; that the shame ought to be on the ones who inflicted the violence, not on its recipient. I decided that the embarrassment and humiliation victims felt were more of a problem than the torture itself; that people hated themselves and blamed themselves for what had happened. I wondered where the shame came from in the first place; who had taught me to feel ashamed when somebody mistreated me? I decided vaguely that it had something to do with the Dursleys, and then probably with school hierarchies and cliques, and then cultural expectations and gender roles (not that I thought of them in those terms) and society in general. Then I wondered if other people were ashamed of being weak, and decided they probably were. It seemed stupid.

My self-respect suddenly reignited like a dragon's flame, I felt calm and confident, and I told the nearest person (Lucius, I think) that I forgave him and that I pitied him. I can't remember what he said to that, although I wish I could; I'd like to have seen his face when he heard it. Then, of course, Voldemort tortured me, and I got loose and fought with him and accidentally knocked his house down; and then ended up in a coma for three months while he was tortured. I don't blame the epiphany for that, though. It made me very clear-headed and calm; if it hadn't been for that I don't think I'd have succeeded.

Months later, I still wondered why people cling so strongly to shame. You'd think they would stop. I finally figured out that dropping their shame would also mean dropping their pride, but even then, the pride didn't seem worth it. It seemed better to drop the aggression and the machismo and just accept yourself and your weaknesses; but then people would slag you off for it, wouldn't they? They would sneer at you for not being aggressive, like the way we all patronised Neville; so really people don't dare give up their shame, because then they would be shamed even more.

I can't even blame them for it. It took torture at the hands of the Death Eaters before I gave up my shame.

To be honest, I think a lot of people would stick with the torture.

_Week 38_

"Thank you for _The Getting Of Wisdom_," I announced to Voldemort, trundling into his cell with the fat little volume in my hands. "It was very helpful. It's about not conforming, isn't it? Hello, Karsten," I appended, patting Karsten on the head.

"He couldn't hrow him away," Voldemort informed me in a rather shaky voice as he surfaced from under his blanket. "He picked him up and lauhed and said 'Oh, sssomebody's given you a toy,' and said hings and 'hen 'Oh, I hink we'll have to take 'hat away, won't we?' and I said 'Harry gahe me it' and he put him back down." He managed to stop this monologue to beam at me. I nodded and smiled and tried to look cheerful.

"Does he ever take his mask off?" I asked abruptly.

He blinked at me and said, "Who?"

Had he finally lost his marbles? "You know. You know – _Him_."

"I hahe _no _idea what you're talking about."

I sat down on the bed and tried again. "When I see you being tortured, I see this figure, this tall figure in a robe and a mask. I asked, Does he ever take his mask off."

Pause, then, "Oh. Him. Aaaahhh..." A sigh like an orgasm, or a death-rattle; then a long silence. "No. That stays on."

"Right."

I thought about the figure. What was there to say about it? Tall, rather thin; covered by a black robe, head covered by a black hood-cape-thing... Could be anyone. No, actually, now I thought about it, the hood billowed out a bit as though there was long hair underneath.

"And it's definitely not a Dementor? – oh no, they don't talk."

"Might as well be," he muttered.

"It's that bad?"

"Worse," he said matter-of-factly. "Dementors can only replay all your bad memories... emohions... Hey haven't got a point to make."

Worse than a Dementor?! As if! I opened my mouth to argue and suddenly had a flashback. _"If Tom Riddle were to rise again, do you really think that he would treat us any better than we are presently treating him?"_

"_Do I _think_ so? I _know_ so, sir. He tortured me before I fought him. He didn't do anything like as bad to me as they're doing to him now. It doesn't compare."_

I shut my mouth with a snap. If he said it was true, it was true. Besides, he'd never really seemed to have much in the way of emotion, so I supposed he didn't have that much to relive.

I thought about shame, and I wanted to tell him that that was all he needed to do, to drop this see-sawing between shame and pride and everything would be all right; but I could see at once that it would be no use. My problem, after all, was that I'd been hovering uneasily between two moral codes; and you certainly couldn't say that about him, could you? He'd only ever believed that might made right, ever since he was a child. If I wanted him to adopt a just and merciful world view, I'd first have to explain to him what that was.

He would never give up his pride, anyway; he was _made _of pride.

And then there was that little matter of his being a mass murderer. It had been all right for me to forgive everyone, including myself, because I hadn't really done anything. (Or not on purpose, anyway; I can't pretend I've never been really, really stupid.) If _Voldie_ were suddenly to become a living saint, though, he'd have to repent of all his crimes, and then presumably he'd become a monk or kill himself or something. I suddenly and selfishly hoped he would never, ever repent, because if he did I wouldn't be able to shag him any more.

"Voldie," I said slowly, "you remember when you... did stuff to me."

No response, apart from a furtive glance and a dreadful roll of the eyeballs. He started to cringe away from me, preparing to grovel and apologise and say he hadn't meant it; perhaps I'd been wrong about his pride... I opened my mouth to say "Oh, pull yourself together," and then realised where I was going wrong: it was English; we were speaking a mammalian language, and we weren't mammals.

There were things I wanted to say to him, and a way to say them: not a language, open to any interloper, but a matching of minds; a channel that was always open between us, simply because of what we were.

"I want to talk about it," I said in Parseltongue. "If that's all right," I hissed deferentially.

A pause; I think he rather liked the deference. "Carry on."

I climbed in next to him; embraced him silently. Hard to think where to start, now.

"When I was at your place," I began slowly. "When you broke all my bones and... Why did you do that?"

He studied my face, blinked in surprise. "I was being good, Harry. I was being kind."

Well, he'd said stranger things. "Kind?"

"It's always better that way," he said matter-of-factly. "To know the worst. You were a worthy opponent... you've always been a worthy opponent. And now..." his voice trailed away. The echoes of his hissing settled around us like soft grass.

"Now I'm a worthy... not opponent," I bumbled, not being very good at emotional stuff. "Yeah, well... anyway, but... was it for fun, or..."

"Fun? Whose fun?"

"Yours. Why, were you doing it for my sake?" Sarcasm incarnate.

"Yes. I didn't enjoy it, but it had to be done." Pause. "I did it for you."

Riiiight. Being Voldemort's friend, it seemed, was even worse than being his enemy. "Why is... doing _that _to me... supposed to be a good thing?"

"Damn sight better than the alternative," he said vehemently. "Would you have preferred to sit and wait in a cell, thinking, _Is he going to...? _I would never do that to you. Life is quite intolerable for those of us with an imagination... I don't use silence as a weapon. I use action."

I sputtered randomly. I couldn't think of a single thing to say. He must have read my mind, I suppose, because he burst out passionately, "It's a _good _thing to hate your enemy. As for an honest enemy, hah! Way above rubies. I _hated _you, Potter. You fucked everything up for me and I wanted you to know that. I hated you, I despised you, I envied you, I feared you... there was no point pretending that I had the upper hand BECAUSE I DIDN'T," he hissed like a chorus of fire hoses, slamming his fist into the mattress.

"You were afraid of me?" I said, astonished and befuddled. I'd been his _prisoner_. I'd been _chained_. I'd been _bashed to bits_.

"And you weren't," he confirmed. "So then I hated you even more. But I shouldn't have been surprised. It was like you."

I hissed "And then you burst into tears," almost absently. I was reliving it, could feel his tears running down my forehead as he sank his fangs into my cheek. He was a strange, strange man.

"What d'you expect?" he said casually, as though this were obvious, and suddenly hissed "I wouldn't have done that for anyone else, you know. Only for you," in a startlingly hostile susurration.

I was lost again. "Why me? I mean, why were you trying to be nice to... why do me a favour?"

Someone marched down the corridor outside. He waited for the echoes to die away and said slowly, "I suppose because, as I say, I esteemed you quite highly... respected you," he said, sounding tremendously dissatisfied. "Perhaps I already knew... No, I _did _know. I admit it; if only I'd admitted it to myself, years ago... I knew you were my nemesis. My only equal."

The _equal _startled me slightly. "Have you heard the second half of the prophecy?"

"Yes, I have," he said dryly. "Rather exhaustively, in fact."

"Oh."

"So... With you at my mercy, in my headquarters... I treated you the way I would have wished to be treated when I was your age."

"When you were my age you wished to have all your bones smashed to bits?"

He gave it some thought. "Not at your age. Maybe a bit younger."

"And did someone do that?" I said, my brain tying in knots.

"Nope."

"What _did _they do to you?"

He turned to face me with that smile, the one that showed the glinting edges of every tooth. "What, can't you guess, Harry? They teased me and tormented me with a multiplicity of obscure hints until my brain went up in an explosion of grey custard. I was _used _to violence. I could cope with that."

"Madam Pomfrey said thoughts can do more damage than anything else."

"She's damn right. I told you just now: an imagination is a terrible thing."

"But you read so many books," I said. "You read books about fucking _horrible _things."

"You can't get rid of your imagination, Harry. It doesn't go away."

"I'm not actually sure I've got one," I said. "Definitely not like yours."

"Rubbish," he said, so sharply that it came out as a whistle. "You're a bright boy. Your head's not made of concrete. If you've not been using it properly up to this point, that's not because the potential's not there. _I could have tortured you with your own imagination, boy_. I could have left you to wonder what was going to happen, and then I could have read your mind and jeered at you for your wonderings. I wouldn't do that. I would never do that. To use people's imagination _against _them? Can you imagine that? When your mind's such a powerful, ingenious thing? It's an abomination."

My mind absorbed the wisdom very slowly, like cheap sugar paper. I'd probably used my imagination more today than in the last six months. I thought, and whispered, "But you do torture me with my imagination. At night."

Silence. "Hhhhph," he said. "Sorry. I've always tried not to. Not for your benefit, obviously," he added as an afterthought. "Not because I'm good and kind. I just want to stop him looking into my mind."

Him. Yes.

I said quietly, "I think I know who it is."

Voldemort's earlier cringing had quite vanished by this point, but at the sound of those words he grew even more imposing. His eyes became opaque slices of carnelian; all emotion evaporated from his face. He said softly, "You know who it is."

This frightened me so much that I shrank back and said, "Er, I thought I did."

He lay back and sighed again, still in Parseltongue, "Aaaaaaahhh."

"I'm going to find out," I promised him, but he remained inert. Perhaps he didn't believe me.

"What book d'you want?" I asked slightly desperately.

"Can you read French?" he enquired.

"Er. No. I can't read anything except English."

"Never mind, you can bring me the translation. I want Eveline Mahyère's _I Will Not Serve_."


	7. Othello

**Chapter 7: Othello**

_Week 39_

I didn't have any time to do detective work over the next couple of weeks. NEWT work was intensifying horribly and I was in danger of being flattened by a gargantuan snowball of incomplete homework. Getting it done was a greater trial than ever; when Ron was off with Draco, which, obviously, was most of the time, I didn't even have someone equally clueless there to sympathise with my ignorance. Hermione, needless to say, was having kittens over my failure to take the exams seriously.

That wasn't all I had to contend with, either. Off the back of my completely undeserved reputation as a left-wing firebrand, I was once again followed around by an aimless, gaping crowd of zombies, sorry, students, who stood and watched me and waited for me to do something interesting. They were sadly disappointed. More interestingly, not that that's saying much, I was sent a steady trickle of petitions begging freedom for house-elves, legal reform, democracy, and wand rights for vampires. The goblins also sent me a letter that didn't beg for anything but informed me that I should support their bid for equal rights or they'd chop off my nose. The legal stuff was a bit difficult to understand so I had it vetted by Hermione, confident that she would make a left-wing-firebrand-appropriate decision. She seemed pretty chuffed with this job. She was especially pleased with the house-elves one.

"You don't mind doing this, do you?" I asked in the library while trying to ignore giggling tots.

"Of course not," she said, crossing the Ts on her letter particularly decisively. "I've always wanted to achieve something useful. I don't see why you should have all the fun."

"_Fun?_" Ron didn't say, since he was off snogging Draco.

Even if she and Ron never spoke to each other again, though, her relationship with _me _seemed to have healed overnight. Evidently, the lure of sedition was so great as to overcome the minor problems of gay sex and Weasleys; I was suddenly her best friend again, even if she did periodically lecture me about how I shouldn't have cheated on Ginny, and did I know that Dean was trying to get back with her and it was a terrible pity because she'd always liked me best? This sort of thing was not very easy to deal with, since I still felt guilty about Ginny and hardly wanted to open up to her about how I was shagging Voldemort, but I bore with it.

To be honest, I have very fond memories of the January/February period; it was when I first became Me. I took the first step when I was eleven and entered the Witzyworld, but my current incarnation didn't really cohere until I Got Politics; even if it was really the politics that got me.

_Week 40_

Just when I couldn't have been any more distracted, along came Valentine's Day. This did not augur well. For a start, the traditional Hogsmeade Valentine's visit was actually _on _Valentine's Day, which hadn't happened since 1987; this meant an extra-spangly celebration, which I suspected would give even more scope than usual for disaster. Second, Hermione was out to impress or annoy Ron, and had snagged a stud from the Ravenclaw Quidditch team to show off at Hogsmeade; I doubted she would succeed in starting a fight with the ginger one, but there'd be tears before bedtime either way. Third, Ginny might find a new partner, the thought of which made my heart plummet; fourth, Draco and Ron were certain to have either a gruesomely sentimental love scene or a dust-up; and finally, they might start asking me who my boyfriend was and why I didn't invite him to Hogsmeade. Mmm. I threw myself into my Herbology essays, a backlog of which had been slowly accumulating since, well, ever.

I spent the Hogsmeade visit hiding in the Hog's Head, which, I reasoned, was the last place any courting couple would ever come, unless of course Aberforth had invited his goat. It also got me away from the gawping students; unfortunately, I'd forgotten about gawping adults. The whole bar sat and stared at me in silence. I sat down very firmly with my back to them.

Presently a sharp finger poked me in the shoulder and I twisted round to see two goblins, one of whom said without preamble, "Make sure you support the Criminal Justice Thing, kid, or we'll chop your – "

" – nose off, I know," I finished. "I have. I wrote a letter to the Ministry." I felt intensely pleased to have got everything so well organised. Good old Hermione.

"Don't know if that's enough," the other one said suspiciously. "They've promised us stuff like that before."

"Yeah. Why don't you talk to the Minister yourself?" the first one demanded.

I blinked. "I'm not allowed, am I? I have to stay at school."

"Oh," said the second one. "You still at school?" And without any further questions they trundled out, looking gratified and saying things like "Writing to the Ministry" and "Still at school". Barking.

With the goblins gone, I settled down at my table and ignored the massed weirdos. I had planned to spend my time reading _I Will Not Serve_, but it was a slim volume and I finished it remarkably quickly; so in fact I sat there for a long time thinking about its hidden meanings while distractedly drinking Butterbeer.

OK, so there was some gay love in it, albeit unconsummated... actually, if you looked at it another way, the gay love could have saved the girl from going bonkers, so perhaps he meant that I was keeping him sane? That was nice. There was also some helpful advice about not failing your exams on purpose, which I didn't really need at the moment.

The point was, though, that this was the second book Voldie had assigned to me in a fortnight that dealt with dodgy teachers; the third in three months, if you counted _Villette_. Two common themes were emerging: officious or malicious superiors trying to break up your relationship, and teachers who wanted you to conform and do as you were told instead of displaying any original thought. I wasn't sure how to react to that.

In the end it was getting a bit late, so I drank up my last Butterbeer and was just standing up when Luna Lovegood wandered into the pub. I should have guessed; if there as anyone else in Hogwarts barmy enough to go to the Hog's Head on Valentine's Day, it'd be her. She looked pleased to see me; she traipsed tranquilly over and cooed, "Hello, Harry. The Togan Hickagathnia told me you'd be in here."

"It was right," I agreed. (He? She? It? Oh, sod it.) "Have you had a good time?"

"Oh, yes," she said happily. "I went to the Three Broomsticks with Ginny and she bought me a Butterbeer." This made me blink. Were they just friends, or was this an actual date? Before I'd had time to get over the shock, she continued, "But then she had to put Ron in some water and carry him back to the castle, and I needed to go to Dervish and Banges, so then I came here."

"Why did she have to put Ron in water?" I asked with a feeling of impending doom.

"Because Hermione turned him into a squid," she said serenely. "After he made the chandelier fall down on her head."

"Er – why didn't Draco put him in water?"

"Because he was hitting someone from the Ravenclaw Quidditch team over the head with a chair," she asseverated.

"Thanks, Luna," I said resignedly, and chalked up a fairly huge point on the Valentine's day minus side. I think I'll skip the aftermath.

At least, I consoled myself, Voldemort would be immune to Valentine's Day madness; sadly, I was counting without the First Jealousy. On Sunday I conjured strawberries for him and administered sex, and gave him the happy news that the goblins were going to amputate my nose, so I would look like him soon; and all was going well until I gave him his stack of books, one of which unfortunately turned out to be an unspeakably lurid pulp paperback entitled _Secret Lusts of Grindelwald_. He stared at it for a moment in uncomplicated, open-mouthed puzzlement until I took it back and said "Sorry, you've got one of Pettigrew's."

His eyes narrowed. "Pettigrew's?"

"Yes. Wormtail's. He reads really shit books."

"_Wormtail?_"

"He was friends with my dad and my godfather! People deserve to be, erm..." I thought about it, and gave up. "Well, they deserve to have books to read, anyway."

He bared the ex-teeth. "Are you doing hahours for eheryone in 'his prison, Potter?"

He refused to speak to me for at least ten minutes, which is a long time when you only see someone for an hour once a fortnight, and when I left he asked for _Fanny Hill. _I got him _Othello_ instead and hoped he wouldn't strangle me next fortnight.

Really, it was true what I'd decided when I was with Ginny; all this sex business was way more trouble than it was worth.

_Week 42_

Towards the end of February, I began to feel run down. The weather was a constant barrage of sleet and hail and gale-force winds, the whole of seventh year was revising for tortuous mock exams, and I contracted several bad colds and kept having to go to Madam Pomfrey for Pepper-Up Potion. None of my friends were talking to each other; Hermione was mounting an epic assault on the bookshelves, and Ron still occasionally sprouted tentacles out of his head.

The only positive thing was that I hadn't shared Voldemort's feelings for a good six weeks; no falling down the stairs or writhing under dark figures. On the downside, my libido seemed to have all but gone; probably I was working too hard.

The thought of visiting him in prison became depressing. The sour sweat of his mattress had pervaded my skin; I reeked of torture and mumbled loathing and crazy-eyed despair. I missed a visit.

"Aren't you going to Azkaban?" Hermione said in surprise when I joined her in the library.

"Not this time," I said off-handedly, skilfully avoiding the voice of my conscience.

That night, I had one of the dreams. It built up slowly. At first I heard an eager clamour at the back of my mind, like the chugging of a train; _Harry's coming, Harry's coming, Harry's coming. _I felt the anticipation building and building as I checked the clock, the internal clock that all wizards have; it gets its data, I think, from the earth's magnetic field (Hermione's explanation went a bit over my head). He would be here soon; he would be here. Three minutes to twelve. One minute past twelve. He would be here.

Five minutes past twelve. He was late! I began to feel impatient, then indignant, then worried. Unfamiliar doubts whined at me like dogs. Perhaps he didn't want to come. Had I said something, had I done something to put him off? But he would be here soon, I consoled myself, and felt that reassurance warm and cosy in my belly. Harry would be here soon, and the concrete would grow flowers.

Twenty past twelve. I changed my tune. The inconsiderate little bastard, how dare he be so late? Did he not realise that a whole third of our time was gone? I would kill him when he arrived. I ranted and raved and fumed and then became afraid. Perhaps I'd better not kill him when he arrived. Perhaps he was getting bored of me, or disgusted. I'd better be especially nice to him, funny or interesting or obedient, or he wouldn't come back. Part of my soul gave a howl of anguish, cried, _You surely don't have to jump through those hoops for Harry as well_, but I refused to listen because I was too worried.

Quarter to one. He's not coming. Merlin, he's not coming! Leaping, biting panic. He must be hurt, or ill, or detained somewhere. Perhaps he got injured playing Quidditch, or bitten by a Hippogriff, or Merlin, perhaps the Ministry sabotaged him! What could have stopped him coming, where could he be? Maybe he was dead!

One o' clock. Dull acceptance: he hadn't come. I didn't deserve to be visited. Next time I would have to try to be what he wanted, to put right whatever had gone wrong this time; problem was, I couldn't think what I'd done recently that was any different from things I'd done before. Didn't matter. I'd have to make sure I licked his feet.

The quiet little chant started in my head again, only this time the refrain was _Harry didn't come, Harry didn't come, Harry didn't come_. There was a sense of absolute, terrible desolation. I woke up screaming yet again, and Ron and Seamus had to chase me around the dormitory and extricate me from my blankets.

Then the visit the next fortnight, and he was so pathetically eager, so desperate to please; willing to do anything to keep me coming back and not leave him there, alone but for unspecified maniacs:

I never missed another visit.

_Week 44_

Such big eyes. I'd never noticed before; but when I peered through the flames, there they were, peeping out from behind the quivering blanket as if they belonged to a mouse, not a snake.

"Harry!" said the owner with a trembling attempt at enthusiasm. "I misssed you – "

"Don't, don't do it," I begged. "Just don't," and he stopped, frightened.

"I dreamed about it," I began. "I shared all your thoughts, when you were thinking to yourself afterwards, I must be polite to him next fortnight. I felt all your feelings..."

"Ha," he said, and stared intensely at the foot of the bed for a moment, the stumps of his fingers bunching the blanket into peaks. Then he shook his head and said "Well, it's true, isn't it? People do hahe to be pleasant company, or why would you want to visit 'hem?"

"No, you don't – "

"Let's see 'he books," he said in an extremely passable imitation of brisk authority; except that his hands were still trembling and, when I climbed into bed beside him, he flinched away as though I were electric.

_Othello_. I blushed. "Ignore that. It was when you were being jealous. I got you _Jane Eyre _to go with _Villette_ – " He made a small noise of pleasure, and I felt intensely, unreasonably delighted. "And I asked the bookshop for some, like, brainy-type people and they gave me Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt and Yukio Mishima."

This lightened the mood a lot better than I'd expected. He gave one of the great howls of laughter that I am such a genius at inadvertently eliciting, then coughed feebly for a long time while I patted his back. "Brainy-type people," he said. "Yesss. Which bookshop?"

"Er, Flourish and Blotts."

"Mmm. Anyway, 'hese are non-hichion."

"Aw!..."

"Don't mind, don't mind. I like non-hichion," he assured me meekly.

"Yeah, well, sorry. I spent all my time sort of learning how to kill you, so I'm pretty dodgy at literature."

"All my time trying to kill you too," he mumbled.

"And I couldn't think what to give you to cheer you up and stuff, so I got you Jane Eyre because I knew it was a love story."

"It was hery nice oh you," he said sturdily, although his voice was shaking.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "I do love you... I don't know what's come over me the last month. I just felt as if I'd be sick if I came here again; oh, and I've got a pain up my nose. I knew it was bad to leave you here on your own... um... I think I've gone temporarily insane."

"Kidneys?" he said.

"So I'm really sorry. What?"

"Pain in kidneys?"

"Yes. What? How did? – "

He started sniffing me all over. "Peas," he announced.

"I smell of peas?" I said, certain that he was off his rocker. How precisely had we got from love stories to kidneys and peas?

"Yep. Pohion of Disahectahion."

"You – _what? _SOMEONE'S GIVEN ME A POTION THAT STOPS ME FUCKING LIKING YOU?"

"Well," he temporised, shrinking away from me, "you'h taken 'he pohion."

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY PLAYING AT? I DON'T EVEN LIKE YOU ANYWAY!"

"Sexual desire," he said before the guard arrived and asked whether everything was all right, and I assured her that it was. We listened in silence as she trundled away, then I resumed, "You must be joking. It probably doesn't even exist."

"Take holly."

"What?"

"Take inhusion oh holly. Ih you _hahe _taken the pohion, hat'll cure it. Ih you hahen't, won't do anyhing."

"You're off your nut. What book d'you want?"

"Anyhing's hine," he insisted uncomfortably, still shrinking away from me, and I became embarrassed and cooed over him and told him I would be disappointed if he didn't pick a book. Then I apologised for saying that I didn't like him and explained that I'd only meant he was a mass murderer who'd killed my parents. He played along, gave feeble and gratified smiles that wrenched my heart, and, for reasons that quite escaped me over the next two weeks, chose Jean Genet.

_Week 45_

Holly. I looked it up in my Potions textbook, where I found, to my surprise, that it was a well-known antidote for hatred and jealousy spells. To double-check, I searched for 'Potion of Disaffection', which wasn't there. I finally found it under 'Hate Potion'. Perhaps Voldie didn't believe in hate.

I already know there was some holly in the Forbidden Forest, but the berries weren't in season and you surely weren't meant to just eat them raw. Slughorn's stock cupboard it was, then. After all, I'd raided it so many times when it belonged to Snape that I could do it in my sleep.

_Holly_. Small, pale green pills. I checked the dosage, took two. They tasted of peas.

That night I awoke in shock from more epic dreams, and not nightmares, either. I was in such ecstasy that it was a long while before I could even be bothered to acknowledge that my feelings for Voldie had been abruptly reversed when I took holly; ergo, I genuinely had been poisoned. Someone was sneakily feeding me hate potions.

Could just be Draco, of course. Dab hand at Potions and used to think I was shagging Ron.

Very bloody likely.

_Week 46_

Jean Genet's book arrived and gave me nightmares. Why on earth had Voldemort requested the bloody thing? Why did the woman insist on writing about perverted gay men all the time, for that matter? If anyone found it I would be expelled from Hogwarts. I hid it at the bottom of my trunk and hoped Voldemort didn't think of it as light reading.

Anyway, I had no time for porn; I had a plan: or, rather, I had a purpose. I had to see beneath that mask; that damned strip of textile that was keeping me from everything I needed to know. I had a suspicion, and if it was right, rescuing Voldemort ought to be as easy as a visit to Dumbledore.

If he believed me, of course. Best not to think about that.

And the situation might never arise; not unless I could figure out a way to see Mr Murky without his mask. And how, I wondered, was I to achieve that? Hide in Azkaban with my Invisibility Cloak? Not a great idea, Harry; people really might notice you hadn't returned to Hogwarts. Polyjuice someone and ask them to pretend to be me while I lurked in Azkaban? Possible, if horrifically difficult. Wait until the middle of the night, then Floo off to Azkaban using one of the school fireplaces? Yeah, a perfect way to get instantly expelled from Hogwarts.

I decided all of that was unnecessary anyway. There was a much quicker, risk-free way; or, at any rate, all it risked was my sanity.

That night I cleared my mind. I lay in bed thinking, _I must see behind the torturer's mask. I must see behind the torturer's mask. I must find my way into Voldemort's mind. I need to see behind the mask._

The first two nights: nothing. I wondered what I was doing wrong, and finally remembered the clearing your mind made it more _difficult _to penetrate (oh, god, don't mention penetration again... Especially since it gives me flashbacks about Jean Genet). Presumably I had to do the opposite of clearing my mind; but what was that, anyway? Think hard about things? Feel a lot of emotion?

Well, that second one wasn't difficult; not now I was in love with Voldie again. I wanked happily for about three hours before I finally got to sleep. Thank god for silencing spells.

But I still didn't get into his mind, and I woke up feeling dirty; and paranoid, now, because it seemed wrong that I could find a maniac physically attractive, that a mass murderer should have individuality and intelligence and whatever it was about his body that drove me crazy; or, at any rate, that my body responded. I was clearly a sicko like that Genet woman.

I dug out the book and actually bothered to read the notes. Jean Genet was a man. Oh. That actually made it worse, not better.

Well, anyway, I didn't understand why I was obsessed with Voldemort... oh, all right, _obsession _made sense, but why had it changed? I was in love with him, made excuses for him. Why?

Now that we'd got over the hate potion thing, I was starting to think "love potion".

While I was washing and dressing it became clear that in some sense, my experiment had worked. My head throbbed; I heard sounds, saw flashes of light, that shouldn't have been in my mind. I was pretty sure they were Voldie's sensations. Typical; I got these half-visions now, when I didn't want them. I didn't want to faint down the stairs again, so Ron half-carried me off to the hospital wing, where Madam Pomfrey assured me I'd done the right thing and told me to rest.

Rest! Ha! I didn't even make it to the bed.

There were nasty, turbulent nightmares. I writhed and choked. I was given a ladle and told to pour out an exact amount of water or else the intended recipient, which I think was Stan Shunpike, would go thirsty. It didn't look difficult, but somehow, when I tried, the water went all over the floor; and I tried again, and again, and again.

"You're doing this on purpose."

"I'm not." Gasping. "I can't _help _it."

I was Voldemort; I was in his body. I was sure of it. There was so little light, though, that it was almost impossible to tell what was happening; was that the torturer in front of me? Was that dark blob the shape of his hood? I wasn't sure.

"That's what you said last time, Tom," his voice came from just in front of me. "And the time before that."

Howls of anguish. My skull was sundered. My brain collapsed.

"You will stop doing this," the voice said. "You will stop doing this to Harry."

I _am _Harry, I thought. I was Harry, and I was Voldemort. My heart was racing in terror and also in anticipation; I could see the shape of his head now. My head was held back by the chain, but if he would only come a bit closer, I could grab that mask.

I found the pain tolerable; nasty, but nothing I couldn't stand. Voldemort did not. "I can't stop it!" I screamed. "I – CAN'T!"

There was a terrible lump throttling my throat. Was I crying? No, it was someone's thumbs. "Take control of your mind. Raise your shields. I know you can do it. You will do it _now_."

"I CAN'T! I CAN'T!" I squealed, wetting myself in an explosion of terror, but my hands were moving. I reached up, and my stubby fingers were pale against his mask; I hooked them into its soft corners, and snatched it away –

Then grim dreams, dreams about so many things. I was brooding before I even woke up; reflecting on how I had failed, had failed to see the face beneath the mask and didn't even know what had happened. Had the torturer become aware of my presence; had he thrown me out of Voldie's mind? Or had Voldie done it himself? Maybe the mask itself was made of some strange boy-awakening material.

When I did establish that I was in the hospital wing, my only thought was how to keep the ghastliness from the innocents in Hogwarts. They didn't understand this kind of thing.

I was quite surprised when Madam Pomfrey told me she'd mended three broken ribs. I hadn't felt a thing. She complained that my bones must be made of glass; she wittered on about how I should now be regarded as functionally epileptic and shouldn't use the Prefects' Bathroom and should pad the furniture in my dormitory if there were any sharp edges, and all the time I was thinking, That's not it. I want preventive, not curative medicine. _I want them to stop torturing him_.

"Madam P," I said wearily during a gap in the lecture, "don't you agree, what we should be doing is, is get them to stop torturing him? We know perfectly well I can't block this out properly or stop it happening – "

"I know you can't, it's not _your _fault! That's what I said when you kept shouting, and I _knew _you couldn't hear a word, it was just too upsetting to hear you scream like that. 'I can't help it, I can't help it'. I know you can't."

"But _they_ can. The authorities can, and I keep telling Dumbledore and he keeps fobbing me off – "

"Dumbledore, blasted man, he's always away when the trouble starts. I sent that miserable Malfoy boy and, oh dear, when he said Dumbledore wasn't there I actually thought he was lying. I thought he was just being lazy. Poor boy finally changes his ways and nobody believes him."

"Typical, really," I agreed. "Ron knows, then? Is he allowed in yet?"

"Hmm."

"_Please_..."

"Well, seeing as it's you," she grumbled, and a pack of cronies was permitted to enter, including Draco, who squinted at me and said sullenly, "Sorry I didn't get hold of Dumbledore."

"That's all right," I said. "He wasn't there."

"Pity you didn't fall on Snape this time," Ron commiserated, putting a bottle of Butterbeer on the bedside table.

Draco bristled and said "I'm sure it's better for Harry if he doesn't bang his skull against Professor Snape, who is very hard-headed."

"Ron, he's not here for you to use as a missile," said Ginny.

"No, but like you said, you might as well twat Snape if you can get away with it..."

"Rooon!" whined Draco.

"Sorry, babes," Ron said, smooching him.

"Oh, please," said Ginny. "Not in front of Madam Pomfrey."

"Says you, who was all over the place with Dean Thomas!"

Hermione noticed that the thought of Ginny/Dean was making me pull my grapefruit-eating face, and suddenly interjected, "Did you see anything awful?"

"Er," I said, not sure whether this was a much better topic. "Same as usual, I suppose."

They all looked sombre at this, apart from Draco, who was staring at me with ghastly fascination.

"Is the Dark Lord really being tortured?" he said.

I wasn't sure what to say to that. "Yes."

His whole face glowed. "Good," he said with terrible viciousness.

The conversation went a bit sparse after that. Ginny and Ron squabbled a bit more and then cheerfully excused themselves and argued back off to Gryffindor Tower with Draco in tow. Hermione remained sitting silently by my bedside.

"I quite like it when you wake up in the hospital wing," she said in the brittle voice she uses in extreme stress. "It's the only time we're all together."

"Oh, Hermione," I said, hugging her awkwardly with the arm that was nearest to her. "I'm really sorry about, y'know, all these things going wrong..."

After a pause she said "It was awful to see you. You were thrashing about and shouting, and then you went 'I can't, I can't, I can't'. The gawpers were terrified. I think they believe you're the second coming of Voldemort."

"What would they have to be terrified about?" I said bitterly.

There was a silence while she sat and thought dark Hermione-thoughts, and I contemplated Voldie. Of course, from bitter reflections on torture I soon progressed to idle thoughts on his jawline, and his shadowed eyesockets, and his frosty pallor, and his hemipenis... I stared at Hermione's hair in extreme embarrassment, wondering how we were still here after six years, and we were the same people in the same school with the same bushy hair and everything, yet I was fantasising about Voldemort.

"Hermione," I said, "is there a general antidote to love potions?"

She blinked, then crinkled her nose up in perplexity. "Hate potions, I suppose. Why?"

That didn't seem right. "But then," I argued, "it'd just be love and hate mixed up together. You'd fancy them, and you'd also hate their guts."

"True," she said reflectively. "That can't be right. No, you'd need an antidote."

"A bezoar," I said glumly. Far too expensive to waste on that sort of thing.

"Or a specifically blended potion to deal with that particular, you know, person and love potion."

Well, that wouldn't do, then. I didn't even know if anyone _had _slipped me a potion. In desperation I said, "OK, how d'you know whether you're being affected by a love potion or if, you know, you really do fancy that person?"

Hermione's reaction was most unexpected. She stared at me with a pitying expression, then burst into scornful laughter.

"Oh, Harry," she scoffed. "You can't really be thinking anything so stupid. You fancy men, therefore you must have been given a love potion?! Wizards stopped using that line in about 1690."

"Er..."

"It's just homophobia and self-hatred that your Muggle relatives have drummed into you," she continued, and she lectured me for the next ten minutes on how, yes, sexuality could be a confusing thing, but I really had to be responsible for my feelings and not try to blame them on potions, because really, homophobia had no place in witzy society and it didn't have much of a place in Muggle society either, and I could just ask Stephen Twigg or Ben Bradshaw. I rather doubted they would give me any time out of their schedules, actually, but at any rate, I was greatly comforted by Hermione's attitude. It was nice to have confirmation that she was mad at me and Ron because we'd dumped her and Ginny, rather than just because we were sausage-jockeys.

So, I thought after I'd waved goodbye to her and settled down to rest; why was I mad about Voldemort, if not because of a love potion? Why did I find his jokes funny and his body delicious and his intellect humbling, when he was a crazed, unrepentant murderer?

Theory A: _I am totally insane. _Probably true.

Theory B: _I am totally confused. _Definitely true.

Theory C: _My loveless childhood and violent adolescence have left me a sadomasochistic weirdo like Jean Genet_. No. NO. Really, NO NO NO.

Theory D: _It's something to do with sharing his mind_. What?! I mean, just... what?? Eh?! Why would I fancy him because of sharing his mind, unless he's so egotistical he fancies himself? And he doesn't, he fancies me; he called me "beautiful boy" (snort), so I ought to fancy _myself_... Gah!

Thinking about it just dug me deeper and deeper into a quaking bog of confusion. I didn't have any answers, and most of my mind wanted to avoid tackling the subject at all, which made the rest of me unhappy. It was odd, because whenever I thought about the Transfiguration-homework episode, back when I'd kissed him and tasted him for the first time, it seemed absolutely plain that I'd been doing the right thing.

Possibly that combination of agony, pity and disgust inspired by his torture had sublimated into tenderness.

I didn't know. I had no idea what to do now that I loved him again.


	8. Mercy

**Chapter 8: Mercy**

_Still Week 46_

Gryffindor had a particularly manic Quidditch session that Friday. Ron, though he tried not to mention it to me, was getting quite worked up about the thought of winning the Cup, and was working the team so manically he looked like Voldemort punishing the DEs. I got to thinking about Oliver Wood and his insane popping eyes, and decided he could have taught Voldie a thing or two.

A goggling half-pint lurked nearby. I ignored it; there were always loads of people hanging round Quidditch practice in the hopes that I would leap on a broom and half-kill myself again. Peakes gave a Bludger a spectacular whack and knocked Dean Thomas halfway off his broom; I cheered lustily. (I still wasn't sure what was going on in Ginny's love life.) The half-pint stood nervously on one foot, then the other; I wished it would go away.

Practice finished; the team started to land and take off their gear. Ron vanished under a deluge of Draco, but eventually managed to resurface and shout, "All right, that's it. We're here again on Wednesday at four o' clock. – What are you doing here?" he added, glaring at the half-pint. "You're in Ravenclaw."

The sprog almost fainted in fright, but managed to squeak, "I've got a message for Harry Potter from Professor Dumbledore."

"What?" I said, my sense of security undergoing an unpleasant lurch. "What's the message?"

"He would like to see you tonight in his office at quarter past eight," chirped the sprog, and skipped away in relief at having finally discharged its duty.

My aforementioned sense of security evaporated completely. I hadn't seen Dumbledore since he'd insisted that my visions of Voldemort were false. When was that? Christ, in January... well, of course; I hadn't shared Voldemort's torture since then.

And what had happened in the interim? I'd been in the papers for my supposed humanitarianism, been poisoned, failed to see under the torturer's mask and become sexually obsessed with Voldemort. Dear god. If Dumbledore's Occlumency was working, I was buggered.

He was obviously happy when I got to his office. "Come in, Harry, come in," he said enthusiastically; and the twinkle was back in his eyes, which was fairly unusual nowadays whenever I was around. This should have cheered me up, but my unease deepened.

As he walked back to his desk I noticed his closed fist, from which a little, blackened tail swung weakly. I stared at the thing; wondered what it could be. Something about it made me afraid.

"You wanted to see me, Professor," I mumbled hesitantly.

"I did!" he said enthusiastically. "I have a very happy piece of news, Harry. I have achieved something I was beginning to think that nobody would ever accomplish."

He sounded almost exuberant. I stared.

He smiled self-deprecatingly. His hand opened. Out onto the desk fell scorched, blasted chain, its links distorted. With a hollow rap, a small ovoid followed the chain; Slytherin's locket.

"AARGH!" I managed not to scream, but there was no hiding the rest of my response from Dumbledore. I stared at the pathetic remnants in horror, recognising them for what they were: one-seventh of Voldemort's cremated corpse, and he had only three-sevenths left.

"Oh, my god," I said hoarsely.

He looked at me over the tops of his glasses. There was a long silence. Then he slowly nodded.

"It's true, then," he said heavily, sitting down behind his desk. "I had hoped it wasn't, but there seems to be no hiding from it. You are personally attached to him."

"That's not a crime!"

"Killing your parents was a crime," he said.

"That doesn't excuse anything and everything, and what does it matter? You don't have to like someone to oppose capital punishment!"

Dumbledore blinked a bit. Hermione's turn of phrase had rubbed off on me. I needn't have expected to deter him for long, though; he looked extra old and weary and said quietly, "Harry, friendship is never a problem. What worries me is that your friendship seems to be seriously affecting your judgement."

"Affecting my! – You've _destroyed _his _Horcrux!_"

"Did you want him to live forever?" Dumbledore asked with some asperity.

I tried to think. If we didn't destroy the Horcruxes, he would live forever in jail, being tortured. Nasty. On the other hand... "So you're going to let him live for another forty years, are you? If you destroy the Horcruxes. Or is this so that he can be _executed?_"

"Why does Lord Voldemort deserve better?" he said.

"_Everybody _deserves better than being taught that they should want to _kill _people!"

Dumbledore actually clapped a hand to his forehead in frustration and demanded, "The way he did?!"

"Oh, _sir! _You can't possibly be – 'There is some killing going on in our society, therefore we will solve the problem by doing some killing.' That's about as sensible as – "

"Harry, I am not prep – "

" – as saying 'There is some pollution in this river, so we'll deal with that by dumping some more pollution in it'," I shouted over the top of him.

"I am not prepared to discuss this."

I was speechless for a moment, then: "Oh, aren't you! You needed me to kill him, but now, when you don't need me any more – "

He held out his hands to me and said, "Harry, I am the last person who ever wanted you to be the Chosen One. You were too young. The responsibility laid upon you was cruel. It was unjust..."

"It's all right," I conceded, warmed by this obviously genuine anguish.

"What I can't understand is why you would want that burden continued for a second further than was necessary."

"Oh, no," I said, my affection evaporating on the spot. "I'm not having that. Now you've used me, you want to get rid of me."

"I – "

"Not_ you_. But the Ministry. Whoever's in charge. 'OK, we've got the kid to defeat Voldemort for us, now he can fuck off back to school and do his Herbology homework!'"

"If you will insist on acting like this, I can't really say I blame them," he said. "And I had probably better get up to the hospital wing now. I injured myself again destroying the Horcrux."

I felt ashamed. "Sorry, sir. No, don't – let me help you," I said as he tried to rise, taking hold of his elbow to give him some support. I felt rather guilty now; after all, he'd stood a good chance of being killed, and given the choice of which should survive, him or the Horcrux, I'd definitely go for him. I mean, there were still two Horcruxes left, and the old lad basically meant well.

He didn't go straight to the hospital wing, though. After a couple of steps he came to rest in the centre of the room and said "I will confess this to you, Harry: I do not want Lord Voldemort to live forever."

That seemed both obvious and fairly reasonable. I was trying to think how to answer when he continued, "Whatever decision we make concerning his right to life, I do not believe he has any right to eternal life."

In other words, he was determined to go after the other two Horcruxes, whatever I thought. I didn't reply; I didn't even know how I felt about it myself. I knew that I didn't want Voldemort to die now, or in the near future, or even in the next twenty years; still, the thought that he would live _forever_, for centuries after my death, was too strange. I decided to leave it for the moment. It had taken Dumbledore a whole year to find this Horcrux, after all. He might never even find the others.

Anyway, there was a little snake in my head, a rogue idea that had been growing in there for quite some time and was trying to inch out through my mouth. I vacillated, then let it.

"Professor," I said hesitantly, "Madam Pomfrey happened to mention – they always have trouble with, when, when I feel Voldemort's... feelings, because you're not there."

He weighed heavier against my arm, and gave a sigh so deep I swear his beard grew at least an inch in the time it took him finish. "Harry, I will always try my utmost to protect you. That said, there are some feats that are beyond even my – I hope you will forgive me for saying this – extraordinarily mighty powers. I can't maintain a shield of Occlumency while I am away from Hogwarts."

"You were stopping his feelings getting through," I concluded, deeply touched.

"I was _trying_ to stop him," he said gloomily, "but as I say, I am not omnipotent, and Tom Riddle was always unpredictable."

I felt horrible. I'd spent the last ten months grumbling about Dumbledore, thinking that he was out of touch and inhumane and not taking me seriously, and it turned out that the whole thing would have been twenty times as bad if not for him.

"Um. Um, thank you, sir. Hospital wing now?" I said apologetically, opening the door.

"I think I can manage to get there on my own," he said. "But I should be obliged if you would find Professor Snape and tell him that I require his presence there."

Snape. Wonderful. My remorse evaporated and a great deal of antipathy rushed back. I now realised that I hadn't told Dumbledore about the Hate Potion; still didn't know if he would have believed me. Privately I felt that he wouldn't have.

"Yes, sir," I said doucely. "I'll send him up as soon as possible."

"_Squark_," Fawkes contributed as we shut the door.

---

Sunday came. Love. My heart was so full of all the things I needed to say to Voldemort I began to think I needed a bypass.

And then I walked into his cell, and it was pink. _Pink._ At first I thought I was hallucinating; but there was no time for that, because he was propped up in bed, wearing this... this _thing_. This horrifying... clown suit. It shouldn't be dignified with a name.

I ripped it off him in a rage, my hands shaking, and dropped the whole lot on the floor and tried to kick it. It didn't kick very well, of course, being cloth, so I marched outside, roared "_Incendio!"_, and sent the whole lot up in flames. I got rid of the pink while I was at it.

Then I took my wand back into the cell. Voldemort attack me and steal my wand? As if. And even if he did: well, frankly, I felt I deserved it.

The sight of all that rubbish burning and melting and twisting itself into knots gave me a reasonable amount of catharsis; I thought of Fawkes reincarnated. I picked up the Jean Genet book and threw that on the fire for good measure. Nasty smoke filled the cell, of course, but I sucked it up with my wand, then climbed onto Voldie's bed. He'd been a corpse throughout, a violated cadaver staring at the wall; I straddled him and started cleaning the gunk off his face.

He focussed on my face; gave a very faint smile, a suspicious gleam of the cornea, and whispered, "Sorry, Harry."

"Sorry that I had to see you like this, you mean?" I said, smearing pink all over his face as I tried to stop my hands shaking. "IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT. I CAN'T BELIEVE ANY FUCKER WOULD DO THIS."

"Beats Cruhio."

"NO. NO IT DOESN'T."

"Houting again," he cackled, giving a genuine smile for the first time in weeks, which probably meant he was hallucinating. I sucked a blob off his nose with my wand and hissed, "_Who is it? What sick twat does this? Why can't I see him?"_

Voldemort's eyes changed; startled, guarded. "You _want_ to sssee him?"

"See him? I want to kill him," I said bitterly, scrubbing away stupid, inappropriate colours. His face looked, I decided, as if some twat of a kid at a museum had amused itself by scribbling on the bust of Herodotus. "I want to-" I was vibrating with adrenaline, and relieved my feelings by hurling my wand at the wall with an inarticulate snarl of frustration. Voldie flinched.

"I'm sorry," I burst out, near tears. "I never mean to frighten you – " And after that I couldn't think of much else to say, so I grabbed him and kissed him. After a moment I realised this might not be the best thing to do, so I let go, feeling ashamed; but Voldie, far from having flashbacks, looked gratified and distinctly smug.

"Harry lohes me," he announced to the air, and gave me a shy, naïve smile that reminded me he was cracking up.

On the way back to Hogwarts I decided he was right. It had been kind of him to break all my bones.

_Week 47_

In the run-up to the Easter holidays I had launched a sustained campaign to be allowed to spend the festive season at the Burrow. Ron was basically OK with that, but I wanted to invite Hermione as well; this went down rather less smoothly. All my rather meagre persuasive powers had to be applied to the task; I was determined that my friendships shouldn't all be destroyed just because Ron was shagging Draco.

"Of course she can come," Ginny said irritably. "We've known her for years. _I'm_ not going to stop talking to Hermione just because _you _don't like her, Ron."

"I do like her!" Ron blustered. "It's _her _that doesn't like _me!_"

"Serve you right for putting on a live sex show with Malfoy all the time," she retorted, and flounced out before he could retaliate.

"She doesn't understand, does she?" he muttered angrily. "We weren't just friends..."

I stayed silent.

Still, Ginny owled Molly and pleaded Hermione's case, and Molly of course decreed that we should both be invited; Hermione put up some extremely token resistance and pretended that she didn't necessarily want to spend the holidays with us lot anyway, but five seconds later agreed that I could drag her along. Excellent. In fact, we got it sorted out just in time for everything to be buggered up.

---

A heatwave overtook Hogwarts; or what passes for a heatwave in the Highlands. The clothes we had been wearing became too hot; the bedcovers were too heavy. When I went to bed the others were muttering and opening the windows.

In my tomb of cloth I had uneasy dreams. I saw the fire again. I saw walls melting, holes opening up in the floor, as if I were trapped in the gastric tract of a giant phoenix. I worried, sweated, struggled; then I was back in The Room, and he was there.

He leaned towards me. I shrank back. Piercing, intense desperation. He must not touch me. He must not touch me.

He touched me: clapped a hand on my shoulder matter-of-factly, like a bus conductor; and saying things, casually, in such a calm voice –

"HARRY!!!" I screamed. "SAVE ME!!!"

I woke up – I, Harry, that is, not Voldemort – and fell out of bed with a tremendous crash. I could feel Voldemort's panic almost as strongly as I had when I was asleep; my scar was going crazy. I leapt to my feet and ran out of the dorm before I'd even decided where I was going. The other Gryffindor lads all straggled behind me, either groaning in annoyance or shouting in bewilderment. I barely even noticed.

Once I got to the common room my vague ideas coalesced: I must get to McGonagall and ask to use her fireplace. I took the stairs to her chambers three at a time.

"Professor!" I howled, bashing on the door. "Professor!"

A hairnet appeared, pop-eyed with astonishment. "What is this, Potter?"

"IT'S VOLDEMORT! HE'S DYING!"

Attention successfully grabbed. She froze. "Wh–"

"I need to use your fireplace to get to Azkaban!" I said desperately. "Please," I added as an afterthought.

"You can't go to Azkaban just like that, Potter – "

"I CAN IF IT'S AN EXTRAJUDICIAL EXECUTION!"

She dithered uncharacteristically for only a moment longer, then said firmly, "You wait here, Potter, and I'll go and check with the Headmaster." She let me into her living room and shut the door. I could hear her pattering off down the corridor outside.

Once she was gone, I didn't waste any time. I knew she kept the Floor Powder in one of her desk drawers, so I unrepentantly burgled it and cast it onto the fire, shouting, "Azkaban!"

I hadn't brought the Invisibility Cloak. As it turned out, I didn't need it. The damp corridors were deserted; my bare feet splish-splashed along the tiles, but nobody bothered to investigate the echoes. I ran straight into Voldemort's cell.

Nobody there. No dark-cloaked oppressor. Just a mutilated Dark Lord in the bed, huddled up and shivering like a puppy. I leapt straight into the bed on top of him, eliciting a startled screech, and cuddled him under the blankets, stroking his head and whispering silly things. He pressed himself into my chest and burst into tears.

I don't know how long I was there before he spoke. "Harry," he mumbled, gratified. "You came hor me."

"What was happening?" I murmured into his shoulder.

Ghastly quivering. His skin seethed like milk. "Harry, Harry," he quavered, "he's going to kill me." A pause. "HE'S GOING TO KILL ME!"

The shriek echoed down the corridor like a shotgun blast. We froze and waited to see if any guards would appear. They didn't.

"Stop shouting like that and talk sense," I hissed. "What d'you mean, he's going to kill you? Who is? Wh–"

"He told me! He sssaid ssso!" said Voldie, scrabbling desperately at my chest. "He said – " tears. "He told me! HE'S GOING TO – !"

He started to scream again and, god help me, I clapped my hand across his mouth. "_When?_" I hissed. "When are they going to do it?"

"_How should I know? _He told me. He told me, during – " He shuddered and lost control of his Occlumency again, and we relived the whole dream –

_He leaned towards me. I shrank back. Piercing, intense desperation. He must not touch me. He must not touch me._

_He touched me: clapped a hand on my shoulder matter-of-factly, like a bus conductor; and saying things, casually, in such a calm voice –_

That silenced me.

"Maybe you were hallucinating," I suggested at last.

"I hope ssso," he whimpered. "I can't tell 'he diherence any more."

I opened my mouth to whine, "I sneaked out of Hogwarts in the middle of the night and risked a detention for your sake," but fortunately realised how pathetic that was. "But he's not going to kill you _now_. He's not _here _now. This wouldn't be a good time to rescue you, I haven't even brought the Invisibility Cloak."

"I was hahing a nightmare," he said, trembling, "and it was nearly as bad as when it happened." He dug his stumps into my arm, insofar as that was possible. "So I screamed hor you to come and ressscue me," a gratified grin, "and you did."

I felt my height increase by approximately eight feet. "But I haven't done anything," I objected gently, tickling him.

"You're here," he said with pleasure. "You came."

Then, footsteps. Feet squelching through the sludge in the dank corridor. I looked quickly at Voldie. His expression was unreadable.

"I should get my wand if it's the torturer," I said, and I ran through the curtain of flame and scrabbled for my wand, standing up just in time to face –

– Dumbledore. Talk about an anticlimax. Actually, considering I was about to incur 42,000 detentions, perhaps not.

"Hello, Professor," I said, totally disconcerted, and called, "It's Professor Dumbledore," through to Voldemort.

Dumbledore strode calmly across the room and through the curtain. I dropped my wand and scurried after him, startled. "You're supposed to leave your wand here, sir!" I said reproachfully.

"I have never been afraid of Tom Riddle, Harry," he said calmly. He stood in the centre of the cell with his wand at his side, gazing down at Voldie; who was grinning. He looked at me, and grinned more.

"Am I ahraid oh you, Albus?" he said mockingly.

There was a long silence while they had their staring match, then Dumbledore said, "Harry, I am sure you have a good reason for being in Azkaban rather than the Gryffindor boys' dormitory."

"Er, well, I thought I did, sir."

"We will discuss that back at Hogwarts. In the meantime..." he looked down at Voldie again and said, "I am sure you would enjoy more pleasant company."

Voldie looked right back and husked, feeble but triumphant, "Harry lohes me."

Dumbledore said nothing. He just turned to me and held his hand out politely towards the curtain of flame. "See you later," I told Voldemort, and we left the cell and set off out of Azkaban.

As Dumbledore and I splashed down the corridor there was a hideous, mortifying silence. I chanced a couple of peeps at his face, but he looked quite calm. I wasn't reassured.

It wasn't as if I'd had no warning, I supposed. Hermione had told me I'd be in deep shit if I didn't stop breaking rules. I wasn't sure what would happen now; my mind was a blank.

Only when we were nearly at the gate did Dumbledore turn to me, open his mouth, then notice mid-inhalation that I was barefoot. He silently pointed his wand at the floor and a pair of bunny slippers appeared.

"Thank you, sir," I said, shuffling them on.

"Harry," he said, "nothing of this sort must _ever _happen again. If it does, you _will _be expelled from Hogwarts. For that matter, you might be prosecuted."

He looked at me so gravely that I said "Yes, sir. I understand."

He gazed at me for a bit longer and said "I hope that you do. Now, I expect you need your sleep, so if you would return to your bed, I would be grateful."

"Yes, sir," I said dutifully, and we trundled down the rocky path until we reached the Apparition point, and he Side-Alonged me back to Hogwarts.

---

The next day I discovered I still wasn't afraid of anything; not even Hermione, who told me 900 times that I was an idiot, or McGonagall, who chewed my left arm off for using her fire; especially when she demanded "What _was _happening to You-Know-Who, anyway?" and I responded, "He was having a nightmare."

She seemed to think that wasn't an adequate reason for running off to see him. Honestly, these people had no sense of proportion.

I didn't really listen to any of it, since I was still chewing over what Dumbledore had told me: I was banned from visiting Voldemort for "the foreseeable future". No hint as to how long that might be. He'd said to ask him again in a month's time. I thought a month might be too long.

It was impossible to do anything about it now anyway, since school was breaking up and the corridors were full of small children lugging suitcases bigger than they were; and thank god I was off to spend two weeks at the Weasleys', because the whole school seemed to think I was a freak (again). I suppose running through the common room at midnight, screaming, will do that for a person's reputation; the only good thing was that they seemed to think it had been a late April fool.

Except Snape, who seemed to know everything about it.

"I have now entered your names for the NEWTs," he preached coldly, trundling around between our desks like a Dementor; "even Longbottom's, despite the certainty of the school's money being wasted." Neville's face turned purple; I could see he was debating the advisability of walking out again. "Didn't bother with Potter, though," Snape concluded contemptuously, to sniggers from the Slytherin side; "since anyone whose idea of an April fool is to break into the Dark Lord's prison cell," sneer, "is plainly too important to bother with an exam."

This actually summed up my feelings re: the exam perfectly, so I didn't worry about whether he'd actually omitted my name from the roll or not. I sneered back at him.

While we were packing our stuff, Hermione did her nut repeatedly over the possibility that he had failed to enter me for the exam, which, she pointed out time after time, was illegal. I said "Yes, yes" absently without caring at all.

What I wanted to know was: everyone knew I'd run around shrieking in the middle of the night, so fair do's, but how come Snape knew I'd been to Azkaban?

---

The sight of Platform 9¾, and Arthur Weasley's beaming face, had seldom come as a more acute relief. (I still found it hard to assimilate the blessed information that I would never have to go back to the Dursleys'.) Ginny made a running jump at him while the rest of us struggled with our bags; Draco parted from Ron with a series of lingering caresses. They were supervised by an approving Narcissa Malfoy, which almost gave me an aneurysm; clearly it would not be long before Draco and Ron made their trip to San Francisco, or wherever gay wizards go to get married.

Draco was putatively off on his hols in the South of France, leaving us lot Slytherinless for two happy weeks, but I was well aware that Ron would zoom off to France in the blink of an eye if the ferret proposed a sordid tryst. With that in mind, I spent the first day of the hols coaxing him and Hermione out to Diagon Alley, on the principle that if he wasn't at home Draco wouldn't be able to contact him. I was aware that the three of us were falling apart but trying to impede the disintegration for as long as possible.

As we visited the twins and bought supplies at the pet shop and drank Butterbeer at the Leaky Cauldron I had a feeling like midge-bites in my tiny brain; an idea that was definitely stupid, but one that had to be investigated now, immediately, or I would limp back to school like a particularly feeble house-elf. It involved going to Gringotts.

I deterred Hermione and Ron with the total lie that the queues at Gringotts were enormous, and they went squabbling back to the Leaky Cauldron looking almost the way they used to before it all went wrong... Did I think of Voldemort's defeat as "everything going wrong" nowadays? Well, yes, I did, and it was partly true. I walked into the bank and looked around for the most formidable- and dominant-looking goblin. Aha, a likely specimen over there; eyepatch, Mohican, and a couple of missing fingers. She saw me coming, grinned nastily, and drummed her fingers on the desk. Owing to the gaps, this produced a very odd rhythm.

"Hello," I rambled, the sudden nearness of my plan scaring me silly. "Nice day. I'm Harry Potter."

"I know," she said, cleaning under her nails with a dagger.

"Are you pleased Voldemort was defeated?" I said. "Goblins in general, I mean."

An indifferent shrug, although she swivelled one ear towards me.

"I see the Goblin Rights Act isn't through yet."

"Deferred for a full three sessions of the Ministry, I think you mean," she drawled.

"Yeah, well. I could have a go at changing that."

"Indeeeeeeed," she said.

"If I managed it, would that be a better outcome than siding with Voldemort?"

"Hmm."

"Well?" I said, slightly irritated. "Hurry up, I've got to be back at school next week."

This resulted in a short and snide battle from which I emerged semi-triumphant, since she implied (still somewhat ambiguously) that I was generally a better bet than the Dark Lord. She then sat watching me and raised an eyebrow.

"Er," I said. "What can you keep in a Gringotts vault?"

"Anything," she said.

"_Absolutely _anything?"

"We request that liquids, gases and perishables are stored in some kind of container."

"How about... a person?"

"Perishable persons must be kept in a coffin."

"How about live persons?"

She bared all her sharp teeth in a grin, looking so much like Voldie for a moment that I was quite disoriented, and said, "Thank you, Mr Potter. We have a deal. If you want to collect on it, please ask for me by name. I answer to Gladys Bonecracker."

I staggered out of Gringotts in a daze, feeling random hot flushes of terror. I'd been quite wrong in thinking that I could just obtain information with no need to act on it. The first stage of the plan was in motion. It was acting without me.

---

The enactment of the Criminal Justice Bill (the one that dealt with goblin rights, that is) now became imperative. I collared Arthur after dinner and demanded a rough digest of its prospects.

"Nil," said Arthur. "It's been deferred for three sessions of the – "

"Yeah, I know. Is there any possibility of putting it back on the agenda?"

"None whatsoever. Their quota's full. Er, why?" he said.

Arthur's eyes, I reflected, seemed to have been designed with excitement and bewilderment in mind.

"Can we stick it onto the end of the Muggle Rights Bill?"

Arthur's eyes bugged like giant mushrooms. "The idea of asking those old – ahem – to approve not only the Muggle Rights Bill, but goblin rights _as well..._"

"Won't it work?"

"Dead in the water," he assured me.

Fortunately, I was seventeen years old, and therefore confident of success. "Is there anything I can do? Like, issue an edict saying, I am the saviour and you will do as I say?"

He perked up. "If you could address the executive yourself, that would increase the Bill's chances enormously," he said hopefully. "Although it would still be best to drop the goblin ri.."

"'Address' the executive? How do I do that?"

"Stand up in the Ministry and make a speech."

"_Me?_" I said, alarmed. "I'm not that good at speaking..."

"I suppose you could write a letter and I could read it out," he moued dubiously, "but it's really no substitute for the, er – well, the _sensation _you'd make if you appeared in person."

I was taken aback by this, and also slightly flattered. "Really?"

"Yes, but I still don't think the goblin rights section would have the faintest chance of..."

"HERMIONE!" I shouted, running up the stairs. Hermione was instantly co-opted to write my speech. Poor Arthur was steamrollered.

At seven that evening I was standing in front of the massed inhabitants of the Burrow, plus Remus and Tonks, who had been specially invited by the evil Hermione. Stuttering and erring, I successfully recited the entire speech and received a storm of mirthful applause, although it took me four goes to pronounce "intraracial".

Three days later I was repeating the performance in front of a lemon-faced Scrimgeour and a gaggle of incredulous bureaucrats, except fortunately with fewer mistakes and at an audible volume; too audible, in fact, since during the bit about the cowardly torture of innocent Muggles I got excited and started shouting, and the assembled mandarins blanched. I think on balance it went quite well, though.

On his way out, I ruthlessly collared Scrimgeour. He shot me a panicky look, then narrowed his eyes as if he were assessing his chances of firing off a quick AK and getting out before anyone noticed. He decided against it. He must have remembered that if I could defeat Voldemort, I could certainly handle him.

"Harry. That _was _a good speech," he said in a courteous tone.

"I know," I said off-handedly, forgetting that they didn't know I hadn't written it. "Now. Voldemort. Torture."

He gritted his teeth as if the sound of Voldie's name was to be expected from a mollusc like me. "I've discussed this already with your headmaster."

"But not with me. Who's doing the torturing?"

"The situation is more complicated than you imagine." A true politician.

"You told me months ago that they would stop, and I've broken my back and three ribs so far. _Who's doing the torturing?_"

He narrowed his eyes again until his orbicularis oculi creaked with the strain. Just when I thought he was about to hit me, he said pleasantly, "I would be happy to sort this issue out for you, Harry, but unfortunately I have the Muggle Rights Bill to deal with. Unless, of course, you would like me to drop the Bill and concentrate on this...?"

Why, the evil old sod. "You just try it," I said between gritted teeth.

He brightened up at that; looked rather gleeful, in fact. "Well, of course," he said amiably, "if you were to delegate this particular problem to somebody else, it would leave me free to deal with the Bill?"

"Fuck off!" I said, then thought about it. "Oh. Hang on." Right. Scrimgeour is offering (I think) to put the Bill through in exchange for my ceasing to ask questions about Voldemort. Normally that wouldn't wash, but seeing as I'm going to rescue him anyway... "Thank you, that would be lovely," I said sweetly.

"So glad to have brought this matter to a satisfactory conclusion," he purred unctuously, and his underlings hustled him away. How I hate the git.

After that we retired to Arthur's office, where he gibbered nervously to Tonks and Kingsley Shacklebolt and drank several thousand cups of coffee and accidentally knocked some over his notes on Dungbombed deodorants. Even through my euphoria at getting the speech over and done with, I managed to perceive that Arthur was not terribly happy.

After three hours a surly minion appeared at our cubicle and told us, looking as if he would much rather be decapitating house-elves, that the Bill had been passed. It would be formally approved the following Monday, and would come into effect sometime around December.

Arthur, Tonks, Kingsley and I eyed the scowling flunky, looked quickly at one another and then nodded sweetly, maintaining our fixed smiles until he muttered his way out of the department. At that point our shrieks of glee could be heard from Azkaban. I hope Voldie liked them.

I was dizzy with success, and terrified. The failure of the Bill would have left me buggered, but it had gone through and _ohmygod now I had to go ahead with the plan_.

Still, it was our triumph. As we Disapparated I felt relief flowing through my chest, a sense of completion like flushing a toilet; goodbye, old crap, hello, brand shiny new world where I have to _rescue Voldemort eek._

---

Back at the Burrow, all was cheerful, except when all was actually giddy with euphoria. Fred and George had created a flashing banner saying WELL DONE, REMUS, HARRY AND DAD! and now erected it amid much hooting and chanting; Molly hugged me emotionally, while Arthur, once Molly had released him, headed straight for the drinks cabinet and gulped down a Firewhiskey as if it were cough medicine. Hermione wandered in and said, shockingly, "Oh, whiskey. Can I have one, too?"

"Where's Ron?" I enquired, trying to find a drink that was slightly less ferocious.

"At Draco's," she sniffed. "You'd think he'd have the sense to be here when you're doing something _important_..."

"And what's Remus done?" I interrupted hastily. "How come he's on the banner too?"

"Because he's finally got a job that isn't at Hogwarts," she beamed.

"Excellent!"

"Oh, yes, he's really happy..."

"Dinner!" shouted Molly, and we sprinted for the kitchen. (There hadn't been much to eat at the Ministry.)

The culinary élite zoomed around producing edibles, and Tonks was talked out of trying to help; Remus levitated around beaming as if he had sunstroke, genuinely overcome by the prospect of employment, which was really cute. Fred and George sat on a blanket box and Kingsley on a pouffe because there weren't enough chairs, and then a scowling Ron slouched in, having abandoned a fight with Draco, and we really were short of space; trestle tables were produced and the party was relocated to the garden. This was just as well, because a little later enormous numbers of Arthur's colleagues started turning up and asking what the hell was going on.

"Besht part of ten yearsh for thish," responded Arthur. He had drunk several more Firewhiskeys. Molly started making a whole lot more food for the colleagues.

Inevitably, at some point in all this happy chaos, Ginny and Remus bumped into each other; and, since I was standing next to her at the time, I witnessed the subsequent conversation.

"Hello, Ginny," Remus said in his placid voice. "I hear your Apparition lessons are going well? You're doing better than Charlie!"

Ginny looked at her feet, entwined her fingers, squirmed somewhat and said "Erm. Yes."

I stared at this uncharacteristic behaviour, thought about Ginny's pregnancy, put two and two together and was seized by a sudden desire to kill Remus.

"That's nothing, she's doing really well as Seeker for Gryffindor," Tonks informed him, then leant on the table and accidentally put her hand in a bowl of mayonnaise. "Oops."

I didn't feel like pointing at Remus and roaring "Pervert!", so at the first available opportunity I pounced upon Ginny and hustled her into a toilet. This took a long time, as she had divined my intentions and was avoiding me, but I was determined to get at Remus before he left. And to think he'd lectured me about visiting Voldemort! Hypocrite! Bastard!

"Listen, Ginny," I said, squashed between the loo roll holder and the bog brush, "you don't, like, have to answer this, but I've been wondering who it was that got you pregnant?"

There was a silence, then Ginny said in a very small voice, "Tonks."

"_Tonks!_"

"Erm. Yes."

"_She's a woman!_"

"Well, yes, but, it turns out that metamorphag – thing – can get women pregnant if they're in a male form. Which, er, we didn't know at the time."

"But you were _fifteen!_" I said, cancelling my intention of killing Remus and transferring it instantly to his inamorata.

"She didn't know that," Ginny said immediately. "She knew I was in the year below you, so I lied and said I was born in September 1980. You know she's very forgetful."

"And does she know _now?_"

"Well... she hasn't mentioned it."

My brain at this point was short-circuiting, hurling out sparks and occasionally emitting garbled bits of messages like _But she's a woman _and _Woman _and _But _and _Aarghlbutbutbut._

Ginny said quietly, "I asked her to turn into you."

"Into _me!_"

"You were still in a coma..."

"So..." My brain tried to grasp this fact. "So it _was_ MY baby!!"

"No," Ginny said at once. She had clearly been through this far too many times. "We researched it, and a metamagi doesn't have that person's genes. It's their own DNA, so the baby would have been Tonks's baby."

"Right," I said, subsiding from the shock. The thought of a baby that would have looked like me, but that I _wouldn't have fathered_, had been too much for a moment.

"It was a really stupid thing to do," Ginny said quietly.

I supposed I should have assured her that people do odd things sometimes (Tonks as Voldie?... I would), but my poor brain had leapt onto the next question: "How did Tonks know what my bits look like?" I said suspiciously.

Ginny blushed spectacularly red. "Er, she didn't. She just, you know, guessed."

"Hm," I said, wondering if my Tonks-bits had been bigger or smaller.

Ginny fidgeted. I suddenly realised how nervous she would feel and burst out, "It's all right, Ginny. I mean, I'm the last person who can complain about it..."

I meant that I was the last man who could complain that his girlfriend had cheated on him, since I'd been in a coma at the time and I'd since got off with a male mass murderer, but Ginny didn't see it that way and she started to laugh. I had to join in; it did sound a bit ridiculous now I thought about it. Then I hugged her and patted her back and Kingsley tried to get in to use the toilet, so we adjourned to the kitchen and carried on just as if everything was normal.

Normal. Mmm.

"Oh, Harry," Ron said uninterestedly, crashing into me in the dark hall, "I asked Draco about Snape, like you said."

"You did?" I said blankly, and then "what – about Azkaban?"

"Yeah," he said absently, plainly thinking more about Draco's genitalia than evil plots. "He goes there – Snape goes there, I mean, not Draco – every Wednesday at seven o' clock." Then he marched off towards the bread and butter pudding.

Oh, well done, Sherlock Potter. _Not_.

Didn't matter now, I told myself. I went outside for more treacle tart and was randomly hugged by a gleeful colleague.

---

Towards the end of the holidays I organised another visit to Diagon Alley to check up with Gladys Bonecracker. Remembering the goblins who had cheated Ludo Bagman back in fourth year, I had bad feelings about this meeting. The Muggle Rights Act wouldn't come into force until December; perhaps the goblins wouldn't let me carry out my evil plan until then. If so, Voldie and I were fucked; he was already so gonzo he practically had cuckoos coming out of his ears.

I was a bit floored to find out how wrong I was. The goblins grabbed hold of me and carried me shoulder-high (which, admittedly, wasn't very high at all) while singing _Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead _in their creaky little voices. Then they dubbed me Sir Potalot, gave me a priceless electrum crown to wear, and took photos. (I've seen the photos. I look stunned; I don't blame me.)

Even Gladys Bonecracker shook my hand for a very long time and boasted to the other goblins that it had all been her idea. She finished by giving a sweeping bow and saying "Our vaults are always open to you, Mr Potter," which gave me the general idea that the deal was still on. That was a great relief. When I staggered away to Flourish & Blotts I was a bit stupefied; but I would never again have to agonise about whether I'd secured Voldie's hiding place.

At F&B I picked up his next book.

("What book d'you want?" I'd whispered gently, trying not to scare him.

No answer for a while; then "_Mercy_," he'd mumbled, his voice like sand.)

The assistant brought my copy of Andrea Dworkin's _Mercy_. Only when I was walking down the bright street with the package did it occur to me that he hadn't necessarily been asking for a book at all.


	9. Gas Light

**Chapter 9: Gas Light**

_Week 50_

Returning to Hogwarts was really not all that much fun. Specifically, I had to grapple with undone homework, lost items of uniform and all the usual start-of-term rubbish, while also plotting desperately to release a top-security prisoner and coming to terms with the fact that my girlfriend had been impregnated by a woman. This was not terribly easy. Just to bang the last nail into the taking-things-seriously coffin, Hermione and McGonagall kept discussing our future careers. _Careers_. I wanted to stare at them incredulously and shriek that I had no future career apart from playing hide-the-snake with Voldemort and counting Knuts, but decided it would be inadvisable.

"I suppose it's possible I could be a Healer," Hermione said doubtfully, "but only if I got more than ten NEWTs..."

"You _will _get more than ten NEWTs, so sign yourself up for it," I said irritably.

"I'm not sure I want to," she said calmly. "All Healers essentially work for the Ministry, and we've already established that we don't like them much."

That silenced me, because it reminded me that she thought we were a team working against the evil Ministry, whereas in fact I was about to vanish without telling her where I was going; unless, of course, I successfully pursued Snape that Wednesday and caught him with a smoking torture device in his hand, and the thought of that still made my knees wobble.

No, something had changed permanently: I was now a temporary resident at Hogwarts. I was only going to stay until the opportunity arose to de-Azkaban Voldemort. This made me sad. I'd been so happy and overawed when I entered Hogwarts as a first-year, and now I was going to sneak out of it in terror and, it appeared, in a state of general irritation with everyone who lived there, and possibly with the entire Witzyworld as well. Why, you ask? Because my goblin-enfranchising exploits had not gone unreported in the _Prophet_, and that, on top of my pre-existing reputation as a left-wing firebrand, had apparently confirmed the general opinion that I was a Loony Lefty/Muggle-loving scum. From my perspective, this was less than delightful. It hadn't actually occurred to me that anyone would think the Muggle Rights Act a bad thing (with the exception of Scrimgeour, obviously), and it was infuriating when student after student interrupted my Voldethoughts by just marching up to me and launching straight into a speech about the benefits of segregation. Ron finally put a stop to this by forcing me to wear the Invisibility Cloak at all times, well, except when I was actually in class.

Even that didn't solve the problem completely, because wandering through the corridors I saw that some person unknown, most amusingly, had put up a big poster with me on it. The caption said, "Derek Dungworth, innocent father of three, had HOT COFFEE spilt on him by sadic Aurors during his brutal interogration. He also got a SPLINTER IN HIS LEG, while imprisoned in Azkaban for eight months. All hail the heroic Harry Potter, human rights activist extraordenere." It was a bit of a pathetic effort (was the paint supposed to be flashing red and white? Is that why it was a kind of wriggly pink? Or was it meant to be guts?), but I ripped it down and strode off, fuming, towards the nearest window, from which I soon defenestrated lots of little bits of paper.

Fred and George's jokes had always been loads funnier than that, I reflected sadly. And Voldemort had been a much better maniac than Snape. Standards were falling.

000

So. Wednesday night. I slunk through the corridors, tailed Snape as he marched grumpily across the grounds. There were loads of younger kids playing rounders and making daisy chains and whatnot in the atypically balmy evening light, which made his swooping scowls seem even sillier; a rook adrift in a field of wrens.

The gates at Azkaban, I was sure, detected the people who walked through them; or rather, they registered that someone was entering, but not, I hoped, how many people. If I was invisible, and sidled through at exactly the same time as Snape, I should be all right. I hoped. Yes. That was assuming, of course, that I even managed to Apparate to Azkaban without Splinching myself.

We reached the boundaries of Hogwarts; Snape Disapparated with a crack. I took a deep breath: now or never.

000

Swathed in the Invisibility Cloak, I followed Snape through the horrid tunnels of Azkaban. He was carrying a box. A box that clinked. He was sinister and noisome and evil. The box must contain torture implements.

He twiddled round spiral staircases and clattered down some steps. Then he went through a few creaky portcullises. I wondered how I would get out of here if the portcullises shut behind me. The whole scenario was ghastly.

Then there was a weird, dusty old set-up that looked like an apothecary's circa 1890. It had a dodgy melamine front desk, on which was a sign saying _Potions And Unguents_. Sat in a cage was a bird resembling a huge, moulting turkey, which was clearly immune to Invisibility Cloaks; it swivelled its head around to look at me from different directions, but didn't say or do anything, which was a relief. I festered in a corner and watched as Snape swept up to a gangly, grumpy creature in a hard hat and handed him the box.

"Thanks," the creature said, not sounding much interested. It peered into the box and switched on the light on its hard hat. Thus aided, it evaluated the contents and said, "There's two missing."

"I know that. I'll bring them next week."

"Righto, sign here," it said, producing a clipboard and slapping it onto the desk. Snape signed. Snape left. That was it.

I stood frozen for some moments until the turkey started turning its head upside-down at me again, and the bloke trundled off to put away his box. I scuttled forwards and read what the two of them had written on the clipboard. It said, "27 (crossed out) 25 Blood-Replenishing Potions. Severus Snape."

After that there was nothing to do but try to find my way back through the prison. Those portcullises were a total pain in the arse.

000

Getting into Voldemort's cell now posed a considerable challenge. I stared at the gigantic metal door in speechless frustration; tried Alahomora, and various other Opening Charms, but I wasn't very good at them and was unsurprised by their bootlessness. I didn't think Accio Key would get me very far, and I couldn't just sit there and wait for the real torturer to turn up; he might take all week.

In the end I got so angry I kicked the bloody thing. It swung open; they'd forgotten to lock it.

So. Voldemort. I barged through the curtain of flame and stared at him, at a loss for words. What to say?

"Harry?" he whispered incredulously, his head creeping forth from the blankets like an ancient tortoise emerging from its shell. "It'sss Wednesday."

"Yes, honestly..." I'd forgotten he might be frightened. I advanced towards the bed; he ducked warily. "Polyhuice," he said suspiciously.

"No, it _is _me," I pleaded. "You, er... let me think. You use your left hemipenis."

"Eheryone knows hat. _He _knows hat."

Oh, _euck_. I tried not to think about this. "OK, the first book I brought you was the _Inferno_. Then there was _Snakes Of The World, _er, what was there after that... OK, _Lud-In-The-Mist, I Will Not Serve, Othello_, that Genet thing..."

"Harry lohes me," he said with quietly befuddled pleasure.

"I love you," I assured him, cuddling up to him and ruffling his scalp, "but we've got to be quick."

He thought, and said "Why are you here?"

"I broke in. I followed Snape."

"Sna-?"

"He delivers potions. I've been banned from coming here again for the time being, but I needed to ask you some stuff."

He stared at me, bewildered, and nodded meekly. His resemblance to an octogenarian tortoise increased.

"Your Occlumency is still OK, isn't it?" I said abruptly. "They can't read your mind?"

"Don't hink so," he said, squinting at me worriedly. He was obviously wondering whether he was in trouble. I hoped they couldn't read his mind as easily as I read his phizog.

"What about cameras?" I said. "Is this cell being watched?"

There was a silence while we both wondered why we'd never thought of that before. He answered in Parseltongue, "I suppose it might be."

"Doesn't matter," I replied in that tongue. "As long as we talk in Parseltongue the mammals can't listen in. Now, listen. Suppose I was to rescue you."

His eyes widened so far I thought they might devour his face, like a serpent swallowing its tail.

"I can't risk you doing something wrong, even with no fingers and legs and no wand, so would you swear an Unbreakable Vow not to hurt anyone?"

He jerked violently, eyes remaining gargantuan. "You can't phrase it like _that!_ I might die from spilling a cup of tea on somebody!"

"Hmm..."

"It sometimes takes _months _to draft Unbreakable Vows. For the love of all that's Dark, Harry, read the drafting manual in the Hogwarts library!"

"Fine. If I draft it correctly..."

"We need a third person!"

"I know that!" I said, slightly nettled that he thought I was such a pillock. "We'll do it _after _I get you out of here. And now, if you've stopped making excuses, _will you do it?_"

He twisted; his spine rucked. He splayed out rigid and wild against the bed and hissed, as if in agony, "_Yesssssssssss._"

I was briefly silent after this. "Bugger me," I said. "You looked as if you were making a Horcrux."

"I might as well be," he said hoarsely. "I hate you, Harry, even though I know you're trying to help. They take my legs, my teeth, my wand, and now you milk my poison. I might as well be pure spirit for all the use I'll be."

"My heart bleeds," I said. "Now shut up and do as you're told. I'll bring the Invisibility Cloak next time I come. Do you know how to get rid of the wall of fire?"

"It's a simple Finite Incantatem, Potter." (I noted that he'd got his confidence back.) "You only need enough power. Try doing it now."

"I'm not doing it now!"

"Oh – well, I suppose they would notice..."

"I mean _you might escape_, you twat! And you say your Occlumency's holding out?"

Pregnant pause. "Er..."

"It ISN'T?!"

"Shut your face, Potter, I'd like to see you do better! And my Occlumency's _fine! _It only gives out when I'm being tortured, and I can't remember _anything _then!"

Bit more shouting. Then I said into the silence, "I thought I knew who it was, behind the mask. I was _sure _it was Snape, but it wasn't, and..."

"Mm," said Voldemort with no apparent interest.

"Don't you care?" I said, astonished. "Don't you want to know – "

In retrospect, I suppose he must still have been in a bad mood from swearing not to kill anyone. "Oh, hor huck's sssake, Potter," he shouted, "_'here is no mask_. He doesn't _wear _a hucking masssk. It's all your imahination, because _you don't want to see who it is_. Anyone could higure 'hat out, you ssstupid bloody simpering ssspoilt hucking 'HILD!" he shouted at my back as I stormed out of the cell.

000

And I stormed back into the Gryffindor boys' dormitory at five to eight, and I employ the word in a very literal sense, since it was pissing down outside and I had become pretty wet. I was now angry about almost everything. I became angrier still when I plonked myself down on Ron's bed, began, "Ron," and was interrupted by twin howls as Ron and Draco emerged from the blankets. A lot of shouting ensued. When I stamped back down the stairs it was in fury that all my best mates had become sex maniacs just when I actually needed them.

I felt I was still in Azkaban. I'd tried to help my lover and he didn't want to be helped, and I didn't know what I'd done wrong and shouldn't be in love with him anyway. Wonderful. I rushed into the Gryffindor common room like a rabid bear and people ran away from me in terror. I sat in a corner and glowered.

We were still stuck in the horrid tunnels, me and Voldemort, and I felt we would grope down there for all eternity, never finding the way out.

Just when I was building up a really good head of suicidal ideation, Hermione pranced up breezily and said "Hello, Harry. I've been looking for you everywhere! Were you hiding from the conservatives again?"

I muttered something unintelligible.

"Luna's brought this package for you," she continued. "She tried to give it to you earlier but, obviously, you were invisible," and she slapped the parcel down in my lap and bounced off to her tryst with a muscle-bound Hufflepuff.

I stared at the missive. It was from Flourish & Blotts, but I couldn't think why, because, obviously, I hadn't ordered anything this week. The shape was rather odd; it was too thick to be a letter. It looked as though they'd included a catalogue.

It wasn't a catalogue. It was _Gas Light_, finally tracked down by their beleaguered Muggle expert after several months of searching second-hand bookshops. A calligraphically majestic note informed me that F&B were including it gratis in thanks for my patronage and that they were glad to be able to support risk-taking and freedom of thought in the magical community. (Yes, well, a bookshop might just have a _teensy _bit of a vested interest in supporting freedom of speech.) Feeling chuffed to have got hold of Voldie's lost book at last, not to mention flattered, I got started on the skinny volume. After all, it wasn't as if I had much else to do.

An hour later I felt paranoid. I felt trapped. I was imprisoned in a minute, pitch black cage, watched by a thousand eyes, which I assume was indeed the emotion Hamilton had aimed to induce. He had succeeded beyond his ambitions. Little tendrils of fear took root in my cerebral cortex, like heather growing into a crag; I felt that if I scrubbed for a hundred years I would never get them out of the crinkles.

There was no question by now that someone or other was gaslighting me. The book reminded me that I still had no idea who it was. The deception was so thorough that I felt encased by it, clamped like an eye in its socket; blind and helpless. Innocence and honesty, or what little of those I had left, couldn't protect me; someone had warped my world to fit their pretence.

But not Voldemort's: he didn't see the mask. What did he see, then? Did he know who the torturer was? And if so, why hadn't he told me?

When I finally finished staring into space and conducting my imitation of thought, I realised with a start that everyone had gone to bed. I should follow them, I supposed. Going to sleep, in the dark, with _Gas Light _still in my head, was the last thing I wanted to do; but there wasn't much choice and besides, the mental turmoil I was in might just trigger off another insight, or vision, or something that would reveal the torturer's identity.

I told myself this several times and wondered why I didn't feel more enthusiastic. The answer to that one, however loath I might be to admit it, was that I did not want to know who the torturer was. Voldie was quite right on that one.

000

Sore head, prickling eyes. I fell asleep and, seconds later, woke up again. I did this about fifty times. My body was trying to keep me from my dreams.

They came in the end, though, slipping in sideways; insidious and dreadful. They were troublesome and queasy even before the mask arrived, although I can't remember precisely what happened; I was trapped in some kind of underground complex, a serious of dark concrete tunnels, and then I came out into a courtyard and saw the mask on the floor, cemented into the ground. I tugged at it, kicked at it, but it wouldn't move; and then the dream changed and it was all downhill from there.

A little grey nonentity appeared, mask firmly across his face. I reached out for it, but couldn't touch it; but it didn't matter, because he took it off himself.

He took off his mask, and his face was made of some sort of putty or play-dough; and it moved. Sausages of face wriggled and dropped off and started crawling across the floor towards me, and I jumped back in disgust; his whole head disintegrated and his robe dropped to the floor, empty;

He took off his mask, and underneath there was a face that was sore and weeping and covered with burns; I was filled with disgust and sympathy and leaned forwards to help, but at the last minute I saw he was pointing a gun at me;

He took off his mask, and his face was made of water and it fell on the floor with a splash. I leant over to inspect it and suddenly the water was a pool, a round pool like a Pensieve, and I was looking closer, looking into it.

It was the atrium of the Ministry of Magic again, and I relived the fight as if I was actually there. Golden statues were running amok; Bellatrix was pinned down by a metal witch. Voldemort fired an AK at Dumbledore and it came so close to actually hitting him; my heart was striking my ribs like a fist as the security desk was ignited instead. Dumbledore responded with something that seemed to warp space and time, that pulled my hair up on end as if it were electrified, and Voldemort produced a moonlight-white shield to bash it aside.

There came a hollow boom like the tolling of a funeral bell. Present-day me, the seventeen-year-old, felt a sudden, terrible sense of dread.

"You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?" Voldemort said venomously, eyes slits of resentment. "Above such brutality, are you?" – and it seemed to me that he knew exactly what was going on, in a way that I didn't; neither younger-me nor present-day me, that is; and there was Dumbledore strolling calmly but relentlessly down the hall.

I felt that what happened next would determine, not just the outcome of the battle, but the whole course of the war; maybe the course of magical society long after that. I wanted to scream at Dumbledore, to tell him not to do it, but younger-me didn't understand; and I watched and listened helplessly as his mouth opened with glacial slowness and he said:

"We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom. _Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit..._"

I woke up crying; literally in tears, which were slipping sideways down my cheeks and onto the pillow.

There had never been a mask. My mind had invented it to protect itself, to keep me from going to pieces; and Voldemort had known, had remained silent, had prodded and coaxed me in the right direction for eight bloody months. This from the man who broke all my bones.

It was odd, really, that he had battered me to bits when there was nothing to prove but some obscure moral point; when it was his own life at stake he had stroked me gently, with books.

000

So. The end of the mystery; and of my childhood, and innocence, and Dumbledore, I thought gloomily as I trundled in slow circles on the Astronomy Tower. And now I still had to research Unbreakable Vows, and find out how to break into Azkaban, and do so as quickly as possible while managing to conceal my machinations from everyone else. Wonderful. I could barely contain my joy.

There was a dull amber glow forming in the east, like gloomy brimstone. All else was heavy grey cloud, with a fine mist of rain. I sympathised; the sun, like me, was making an effort to get on with its job, but couldn't see why it should be arsed.

"Harry?" Hermione said uncertainly. "Are you all right?"

Once I'd finished jumping out of my skin, I turned to face the bushy one and tried to get my heart-rate back to normal. She, like me, was wearing her slippers and dressing-gown, and I very much doubted she'd just happened to drop by. "Er, Hermione," I said suspiciously, "what are you doing up here?"

Snort. "Oh yes, says the bloke who was already here _before me_. I wanted some peace and quiet," she said in a rather bunged-up voice, and blew her nose.

"Mmm, so your date didn't go very well," I said, resigning myself, yet again, to endless diatribes re: Hermione's man trouble; but I was quite wrong: she impaled me with a shrewd stare and said, "And yours didn't either, judging by the fact that you vanished for an hour last night and came back completely miserable."

Damn. Why now of all times did she suddenly have to regain her powers of observation? "I was talking to Ginny."

"Really," she said, raising an eyebrow. "Is this _while _she was snogging Luna, or did they stop for thirty seconds?"

"GINNY'S GOING OUT WITH LUNA?!"

"Don't shout, and yes, she is. She's had sex with a woman already, apparently," Hermione said with avid disapproval, "so she explained that she wants to keep her options open."

OH, GREAT. EVEN BETTER. Nobody would miss me _at all_. Friends? What friends? All I had were insatiably horny quidnuncs. Right; it was time to strike back. With the twin intentions of relieving my annoyance and distracting Hermione I said bluntly, "You know, it's a bit personal and everything, but I always wondered why, after I was in the coma and all that, you and me and Ron never seem to hang around in a group any more."

_That _worked. It worked a bit too well. Her face crumpled, and it was her turn to gaze mutely into the sunrise, with a grim air that scared me a bit.

I babbled, "At first I thought it was because you two had, like, gone out together. And broken up. But then, of course, with Draco... I mean, that was why you fought with Ron, right? Because Malfoy's a pain in the arse?"

From Hermione's deadened expression I knew that this guess had flopped. Then her lip began to wobble, which was awful. I made a helpless gesture towards her but didn't really do anything.

"Oh, Harry, it wasn't that at all," she said. "It wasn't anything to do with sex. It was because of your getting captured – and fighting Voldemort, of course –_alone_, because we weren't there to help. We're supposed to be your friends, and we weren't there. I know it wasn't our fault," she added just as I was opening my mouth, "and perhaps we would just obviously have been raped and killed and not achieved anything, but, I mean, when we're a hundred we won't remember what all the reasons and explanations were, we'll only remember that we weren't there."

Well. I'd been _completely _wrong. Again.

"You will be," I said, and I told her and Ron everything.

_Week 51_

"This is so disgusting," Ron whispered, entranced, as we paddled towards Voldemort's cell.

"I think we've figured that out, Ronald. It's a prison, not a holiday camp," Hermione lashed him acerbically. I vaguely supposed I ought to tell them to shut up, but (a) it was wonderful to hear them bickering again properly and (b) they were keeping me from screaming or committing suicide. The number of things that could go wrong at this stage seemed to stretch off into the darkness to my right.

Hermione, as Ron and I had predicted, knew everything about Azkaban within a couple of trips to the library. She even knew that the "gates" must work by detecting density, and therefore if three intruders were to cast a Feather-Light charm on themselves, their density would be insufficient to set off the alarm. Oh, and if they wore an Invisibility Cloak, that wouldn't hurt... And then electricity could interfere with wand sensors, so if we cast a few localised Lightning Spells before going in, that should hide our wands. We had indeed done all this. Unsurprisingly, it had worked.

We rounded the corner. A silhouette moved against the wall. In my terror I punched Hermione in the stomach possibly a little too hard, but at least the bickering stopped. We all tried to be silent as the shadow scratched its ear; tried to be frozen statues, when in fact we were great masses of blood and flesh and subsidiary organisms, all of which were making far too much noise. I watched my endless string of noughts extend itself once again.

Footsteps splashed towards us. It was a bored-looking guard who I'd seen before, many times. He sauntered straight past us and carried on down the corridor.

His whistling, as he disappeared round the corner, was the most incredible benediction.

"Right," I said quietly. "Sorry, Hermione..."

"Sorry! I couldn't _breathe_ for about a _minute_."

"Hermione, we nearly got caught!" argued Ron.

"We'd really have got caught if I'd screamed like I wanted to!"

The Door of Voldemort loomed. The banging of my heart was making it shake from side to side.

"Sssh, you two," I said abstractedly. "This is it. Listen, I want you to wait outside."

Ron and Hermione quietened down for the first time today. They looked very small all of a sudden. Were they really both eighteen? Was I seventeen? It seemed very odd.

"You won't be long, will you?" Ron said nervously.

"I can't see why I would be, unless he attacks me."

Hermione had researched and drafted Voldemort's Unbreakable Vow. I doubted he would be very happy about swearing it, but as for his _attacking _me... I felt more afraid of the bumps of moss on the walls, I thought to myself as Hermione tackled the lock.

Within a minute she had melted it into a little puddle of metal, the door had opened with a soft moan of its hinges, and the three of us were staring at the flames. I tried to swallow, but couldn't.

"Right, shut the door," I croaked quietly.

"Good luck, Harry," whispered Hermione, and closed it. Good luck, I thought, what a silly thing to say; we're past the worst bits.

I hurried forwards, wanting to let Voldemort know what was happening as soon as possible; he might think I was Dumbledore come to finish him off. I levelled my wand at the curtain of flame and said, "_Finite_."

And everything went wrong –

There was no Voldemort –

No snake-man –

He _was not there_.

Sitting sullenly on the bed, his arms wrapped round his knees, was a little Tom Riddle. A _very _little Tom Riddle.

He raised his head and stared at me with hatred.

"Well?" he said.

He was wearing clothes, thank god. That was the only thing keeping me sane.

I swallowed down incipient vomit and said, "Well, what?"

He snorted, his porcelain philtrum curving magnificently. "Don't give me that, boy. Don't drag your pathetic hang-ups into this mess _yet again_. Do I have to explain to you why I'm like this, and who did it? Or can you tie your own shoelaces?"

"I know who did it," I said woodenly.

"_Well? _So are we leaving, or aren't you interested now that you can't use me as your bicycle?" – spat out so bitterly that the "bi" nearly hit me in the eye.

I swallowed a sharp lump of anger; he needn't think he was the only bitter one. "Who's being used?" I said. "You only shagged me to piss him off!"

That brought forth a little facetious smile, and a playful shrug. "I was a good ride, wasn't I?" he said. "I liked picturing his face if he knew."

I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but I couldn't say that to a child; but who was the child here? I felt incredibly stupid, probably the thickest person alive, and such an immature baby; and very angry, too, at having wasted all this time. Couldn't be helped. Good people are so much harder to fight than evil people.

"We're leaving," I said, throwing the Invisibility Cloak at him. "Come on."

FIN


End file.
